The challenge
The vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise, was drowning in illegal gillnets set for totoaba fish.
The case
The vaquita lives only in Mexico's upper Gulf of California. Its numbers fell by an average of 34% a year from 2011 to 2015, mainly from gillnets used to catch totoaba, whose swim bladders sell illegally in China. Mexico imposed a two-year emergency gillnet ban in 2015, banned most gillnets in 2017 and later set a 225 km² zero-tolerance area patrolled by the navy. Enforcement stayed weak. The recovery committee CIRVA estimated 59 vaquitas in 2015, and scientists estimated about 10 in 2018. A May 2024 survey most likely saw 6 to 8 animals, a minimum count from an area covering only 12% of the 2015 range. Concrete blocks laid since 2022 cut gillnetting inside the zone by 90%.
Why it didn't work
Bans on paper cannot save a species when a lucrative illegal trade drives fishing and enforcement is lax; action came only when the population was already close to gone.
Sources
- CIRVA (2016). Report of the seventh meeting of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita.
- Environmental Investigation Agency (2019). Staring down the barrel of extinction: just 10 vaquita porpoises estimated to remain.
- IUCN SSC Cetacean Specialist Group (2024). New findings reveal vaquitas outside protected areas following May 2024 survey.
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