World’s Smallest Porpoise

The Vaquita, the World’s Smallest Porpoise, Slips Closer to Extinction

By ELISABETH MALKIN

The world’s smallest porpoise, the vaquita, is slipping closer to extinction despite the Mexican Navy’s efforts to protect it and its habitat from illegal fishing, experts have warned.

Only about 60 of the snub-nosed vaquitas are left in the northern reaches of the Gulf of California, said a panel of scientists that tracks threats to the marine mammal’s survival and recommends measures to save it.

“We are watching this precious native species disappear before our eyes,” Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, the chairman of the panel, said in a statement issued by the group on Friday.

Demand for an organ from a large endangered fish called the totoaba, which swims in the same area, is driving the vaquita’s disappearance. The totoaba’s swim bladder is dried, smuggled across the border to California and then shipped to China, where it is considered a delicacy and sells for as much as $10,000 per kilogram, or close to $5,000 a pound.

The vaquita, which are generally less than five feet long when fully grown, become entangled in nets set for the totoaba, and drown.

Before the illegal totoaba trade emerged a few years ago, the vaquita was already threatened by long gill nets set by local fishermen to catch shrimp and finfish. Years of efforts to introduce vaquita-safe trawl nets and encourage the fishermen to switch to work in other fields, like tourism, have had little effect.

But once international traffickers worked with local organized crime groups to pay fishermen thousands of dollars for each totoaba bladder, the vaquita entered what Dr. Rojas-Bracho described as a “catastrophic” decline.

After the expert panel, known as the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita, estimated in 2014 that the number of vaquitas had fallen to 97 from about 570 in 1997, the Mexican government agreed that it needed to take additional action.

A year ago, the government announced a two-year ban on all gill nets across the vaquita’s habitat in the northern Gulf of California, and it introduced a $70 million plan to compensate the fishermen. The Mexican Navy was put in charge of enforcement, and the government deployed new fast boats, planes, helicopters and even drones to patrol the area.

“The government efforts are huge,” said Oona Layolle, who leads a campaign by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to work with the navy to patrol the vaquita’s habitat. But in the five months since she has captained one of the conservation group’s two boats, it has become clear to her that many totoaba fishermen are evading enforcement.

“They are managing to go and fish at night, so obviously there is a problem with corruption,” Ms. Layolle said.

Poachers set up fishing camps on deserted beaches and employ lookouts on hilltops to scan for navy boats, she said. They hide the illegal nets used to catch the totoaba under legal gear used for catching other fish.

Even when poachers are detained, “the fines are too low,” Ms. Layolle said. “They pay the fines and go back to fishing.”

Conservation groups also argue that the United States and China need to do more to stop the illegal totoaba trade. An investigation by Greenpeace last year found wholesale and retail stores in Hong Kong selling totoaba bladder for tens of thousands of dollars and offering to import it directly from Mexico.

In its report released Friday, the scientists’ panel recommended that the Mexican government extend the gill net ban and strengthen enforcement efforts.

“If gill netting is allowed to resume in the northern gulf, the vaquita may be extinct by 2022,” said Barbara Taylor, a marine mammal expert with the panel.

Mexico’s environment minister, Rafael Pacchiano Alamán, told the scientists, meeting in the Pacific port of Ensenada, that the government would step up its enforcement operations and track down the organized crime groups involved in poaching. But he did not respond to the call for a permanent ban on gill nets.

Dr. Taylor and Dr. Rojas-Bracho led a survey expedition in the fall to count the vaquitas in the Gulf of California. They determined that there were about 60, but that was before the totoaba fishing season began in December.

In March, three dead vaquitas were found. Others have probably been ensnared by totoaba poachers but have not been spotted.

“Every vaquita counts,” said Omar Vidal, the director of the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico, who has worked on vaquita conservation since the 1980s. “Not one more can die.”

“If the president wants to save the vaquita, at this point the only thing to do is to ban all gill net fishing and enforce it,” Mr. Vidal said. “There is no more time left to do anything else.”