Save Vaquita Porpoises

  • by: dawn krol
  • recipient: Government of Mexico

The most endangered cetacean in the world: only 100 porpoises left—smallest, rarest; victims of negligent fishing practices, climate change: please help.

The government of Mexico is currently developing a plan to remove entangling nets from the vaquita’s range, compensate fishermen with alternative livelihood options, and enforce net removal. The impact of these activities on local fishing communities will be significant and because of this, a critical part of the conservation plan is to monitor the vaquita population over time.

Acoustic methods have been identified as ...the best monitoring strategy because vaquita are difficult to detect visually (group size is small, they avoid ships, they spend little time at the surface). Unfortunately, currently used acoustic methods are not adequate to monitor a species as rare as vaquita. Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Ecología (INE) has therefore requested collaborative support from the international scientific community, NOAA Fisheries included, to develop new autonomous acoustic monitoring methods.

In response to this invitation, US and Mexican scientists together with expert acousticians from Great Britain, the United States and Japan planned and conducted a research cruise in the fall of 2008.

The objective of the cruise was to develop, test, and calibrate an acoustic monitoring system that: can cover a sufficient part of vaquita range to reliably detect trends in abundance with the objective of being able to detect a 4%/year increase as “positive growth” within a 10 year period (this is a 50% population increase if maximum growth rates occur).

The EVIL of unrestricted fishing: extinct species....Vaquita live in Mexico’s Gulf of California and are the smallest and most endangered cetacean in the world!

About 40 to 80 are killed in gill nets each year.

The World Wildlife Fund in both Mexico and the US are collaborating on implementing measures to protect them such as the creation of a marine preserve and banning the use of damaging fishing equipment in their habitat. Without such actions, the animal may not survive much longer. It is the only porpoise adapted to live in such warm water.

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