The vaquita teeters on the brink of extinction. Here’s how people are trying to save it.
Fewer than ten vaquitas, the world’s smallest porpoise, remain in the Gulf of California, their only habitat. Illegal fishing for totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is prized in China for its purported medicinal value, has decimated the population. Conservation groups and government agencies have scrambled to implement protective measures, but disagreements persist over the best approach. Some prioritize enforcement within the vaquita’s habitat, while others argue that tackling the international wildlife trafficking networks driving the trade is the only viable long-term solution, reports Max Radwin.
“This is not a Mexico problem,” said Andrea Crosta, founder of Earth League International (ELI), a U.S.-based environmental crime intelligence group. “If we keep looking at this as a Mexico problem, we will never, ever succeed.”
The vaquita population has plummeted from around 600 in the 1990s to near extinction today. Totoaba fishing, which intensified in the 2010s, inadvertently kills vaquitas as bycatch in gillnets. Mexico banned such nets in 2016, but enforcement remains a challenge. Both the vaquita and the totoaba are listed on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species, as critically endangered and vulnerable, respectively.
The Mexican government established a vaquita refuge in 2005, covering 1,263 square kilometers, and in 2020, implemented a stricter 288-square-kilometer zero-tolerance area (ZTA) where no boats are allowed. The Mexican Navy has partnered with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a U.S.-based direct-action group, to patrol the waters and track vaquitas using sonar, drones, and long-range surveillance.
Sea Shepherd initially deployed a sailboat in 2014 before upgrading to larger, faster vessels. The group has also helped install antitrawling hooks designed to snag illegal nets, removing over 1,700 since 2015. According to Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), sightings of fishing vessels in the ZTA have declined by 97.6% in the past two years.
But ELI contends that patrols alone will not solve the crisis. The totoaba trade is driven by transnational organized crime, with Mexican cartels financing fishers and facilitating transport of the bladders to China via smuggling routes through the U.S., Japan, and Southeast Asia. ELI investigations have identified 160 persons of interest across 17 criminal networks.
“Wildlife trafficking and environmental crimes perpetrated by transnational organized crime organizations threaten national security, public health, and safety,” said Britney Walker, spokeswoman for the U.S. Wildlife and Environmental Crimes Unit (WECU). The trade is also linked to drug smuggling, with totoaba bladders used as a value transfer mechanism for precursor chemicals in fentanyl and methamphetamine production.
ELI has assisted in the arrests of four totoaba traffickers since 2017 but argues that stronger international cooperation is necessary. It has called for tighter regulation of gillnet sales, increased border security, and undercover infiltration of trafficking networks. A recent ELI report recommended multiagency task forces between the U.S., Mexico, and China to address the convergence of wildlife trafficking, money laundering, and drug smuggling.
For now, the vaquita’s fate hangs in the balance. Patrols continue in the Gulf of California, but the networks driving the illegal trade remain largely intact.
“We know who they are. We know where they are,” Crosta said. “We know how they do what they do … Now the problem is what to do.”
If the vaquita disappears, it will be a silent end to a creature that enriched the waters it called home. It will be a loss not only to the gulf, but the planet as a whole, leaving the world a poorer place.
Conservation groups look for new strategies, tech to halt vaquita decline
