The Vaquita, a small porpoise that lives in the waters of the Gulf of California, is poised to become the next cetacean to become extinct due to the impacts of human activity on marine environments.
The most recent inventory of the population, published Tuesday by an international scientific team, reports a species which is reduced to a total of barely six to eight individuals. And the decline of this cetacean, which reaches around one meter in length as an adult, has been brutal, since there were more than 500 of them at the start of the 2000s.
How can we explain that this cetacean is today on the threshold of extinction? The destruction of the species is mainly the result of illegal fishing practices for totoaba using gillnets in Mexico. The bladder of this fish sells for up to $8,000 in China for its purported medicinal properties.
“The entanglements have not yet made the Vaquita completely disappear, but it is a matter of time in the absence of much stronger protection measures,” argued Tuesday Alex Olivera, biologist for the Center for Biological organization. Diversity, in a written statement sent to the Duty.
He also called for measures to completely close all habitat suitable for the porpoise to fishing activities, including constant monitoring of the region by Mexican authorities.
Mr. Olivera is not the first to call for ambitious measures to prevent the extinction of a new species of cetacean. Last year, the scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which notably monitors the evolution of cetacean populations, also launched an “extinction alert”, after a population assessment assessing the to ten individuals.
According to IWC experts, the causes of the collapse of the species are well known, as are the solutions to avoid extinction. “The extinction of the Vaquita is inevitable unless all gillnets are removed and replaced with fishing gear that protects the Vaquita and the livelihoods of fishermen. If this is not done, it will be too late,” concluded the 200 CBI experts.
Supporters of saving the little porpoise hope to avoid the fate reserved for the Yangtze white dolphin, a species of cetacean deemed “extinct” since 2007. The Chinese dolphin, or baiji, was considered an extinct species in 2006, after a six-week visual and acoustic survey failed to locate any individuals.
American pressure
In recent years, the international community has put pressure on the Mexican government to strengthen protection of the species, which has been considered endangered since 1996.
In February 2022, the United States, the market for 80% of Mexican exports, even requested consultations within the framework of the Canada-United States-Mexico free trade treaty. Washington considered that Mexico was not fulfilling its commitments to protect the Pacific porpoise.
Measures to try to tackle illegal fishing have therefore been put in place in an area of the Gulf of California where the porpoise lives. “These measures are important, but insufficient to ensure the recovery of the Vaquita,” concluded the American government last year, while excluding the imposition of trade sanctions on the question of protecting the most endangered mammal in the world.
Several species of cetaceans are currently experiencing marked declines due to entanglements in fishing gear, pollution caused by human activity, the growth of maritime traffic and the reduction of food resources in the world’s marine environments.
Commercial hunting carried out for centuries also exterminated the majority of the planet’s large cetaceans. The numbers of some of these species, many of which swim in Canadian waters, are still at very low levels, despite the cessation of hunting. This is the case of the right whale, which is the victim of collisions with ships and entanglements in fishing gear.