“Losing the Vaquita in the Northern Gulf of California: What Would It Mean?”

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Losing the vaquita in the northern Gulf of California. What would it mean?

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Hi I’m John Rafferty, I am the editor for Earth Sciences at Encyclopaedia Britannica, and today we are talking about the challenge of protecting the world’s smallest porpoise, the vaquita, from extinction.

Spend just a little time with us today and we’ll explore the vaquita’s natural history, its sudden population decline, and the unique mix of forces driving the species toward extinction.

And don’t worry, everything and more will be available on our website so you won’t miss a beat.

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There’s a small section of the northern Gulf of California, off the coast of Baja California in Mexico, where the vaquita lives. This is the only place in the world where vaquitas can be found. Adult vaquitas grow to a maximum of 1.5 metres (about 5 feet) long.
Adult females typically give birth to one offspring, and pregnancy lasts for about 11 months. Besides being the world’s smallest porpoise, vaquitas are distinguished from other porpoises by the black circles around their eyes and their black-colored lips.
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During the 1980s, these small, unobtrusive mammals were classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (the IUCN); since then, however, the vaquita population has fallen substantially.
By 1996, the IUCN considered the species critically endangered. A 1997 population study estimated the population at 567 animals, whereas another study conducted in 1999 (which was based largely on population models and some interviews with local fishermen) concluded that the vaquita population was falling by as much as 15 percent each year. Both studies supported the opinion that the vaquita population had plunged by more than 80 percent since the 1980s.
In 2019, the IUCN estimated that only 18 adult vaquitas remained, while other estimates of the current population size range from fewer than 22 animals to slightly less than 10.
For several years scientists and environmental organizations have tried to bring attention to the plight of the vaquita. (NOAA Fisheries, the IUCN, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Wild Aid, and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, among others—all have programs designed to raise awareness about the vaquita.) Yet, despite their best efforts, vaquitas could become extinct soon.
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So, why is their population declining so fast? After all, these animals are not hunted. What scientists have found is that the plight of this porpoise results from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Vaquitas are victims of cheap, near-invisible gillnets placed in the northern reaches of the Gulf of California. They get entangled in the nets and drown.
(In case you are wondering what a gillnet is exactly, it’s what we might think of as a standard fishing net. Technically speaking—according to the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation & Management Act of 1976—it is a “panel of netting, suspended vertically in the water by floats along the top and weights along the bottom, to entangle fish that attempt to pass through it." Mesh size determines the size of fish caught. Larger fish tend to bounce off the net, while smaller fish simply to pass through the openings unharmed.
But it’s important to know that these nets are not designed to catch vaquitas. Rather, the nets are primarily designed to catch the totoaba, a fish prized by poachers and traditional medicine markets for its swim bladder.
The problem is, vaquitas and totoabas (as well as other species in the northern Gulf) are roughly the same size.
In addition, poachers and fishers often leave these gillnets in place—where they continue to trap vaquitas and other sea life even after their usefulness to fishers and poachers goes away.
Yet, there are significant tools in place to protect this mammal. The vaquita’s habitat is protected by a Biosphere Reserve, created in 1993, and totoaba fishing has been banned since 1975.
In addition, gillnet use was banned by Mexican president Nieto in 2015, but their possession was still allowed. While many of these measures are good and seemingly effective, they only work with strict enforcement, and law enforcement by Mexican government officials has been lax.
As a result, fishers and poachers do not face much resistance. Totoaba swim bladders fetch as much as $20,000 per bladder in the traditional medicine market, but the organ is also valued as a curio, so they are a lucrative product. The totoaba is also listed as critically endangered by the IUCN—but many fishers in the northern Gulf of California fish for them. Nevertheless, regulations without teeth have allowed this situation to continue.
Now, the totoaba live in the northern part of the gulf from November through early June and this is when fishing activity is the highest, and this is when the vaquita faces the most danger.
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But what would the vaquita’s extinction mean to the Northern Gulf of California and to the world at large? Why should you and I care about this?
Before we answer that question, let’s get on the same page about what extinction is.
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Extinction, in biology, is the dying out or complete extermination of a species. Extinction occurs when species are eliminated because of environmental forces, such as habitat fragmentation and degradation, global change, natural disasters and other disturbances, and overexploitation of species for human use [such as overfishing, overhunting—that sort of thing] or because of evolutionary changes taking place within their populations (such as genetic inbreeding, poor reproduction, and conditions where males and females cannot find each other to breed). Over time, numbers decline, and the last surviving members of the species die out.
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Ecologists estimate that the present-day extinction rate is about 1,000 to 10,000 times the background extinction rate. (The background extinction rate, that is the so-called natural rate at which Earth loses species, is typically one and five species per year.)
The extinction rate is thought to be so high these days because of deforestation, habitat loss, overhunting, pollution, climate change, and other human activities that affect the survival of species or the places where they live.
What’s the result of all this? Many scientists suspect that between 30 and 50 percent of living species by the middle of the 21st century.
All of us can understand that the extinction of a species is a loss for the global biosphere. The species is gone forever—and this is certainly bad enough to consider—but it’s also a loss for the local ecosystem where it lived. For the vaquita, this means the Northern Gulf of California—the marine ecosystem there. The role or niche that the species once filled is now open—the job it performs in the ecosystem as a predator, competitor, or food source goes unfilled, and unperformed—so one can understand that the sudden absence of the vaquita can disrupt the normal functioning of the marine ecosystem.
As more and more species are lost from a given ecosystem, the risk of the whole ecosystem ceasing to be what it’s supposed to be increases. For example, what happens when a healthy forest loses many of its critical trees, shrubs, insects, and other forms of life? Can you still call it a forest, or does it become something else? Does it degenerate into a grassland?
As extinctions mount this century, more and more people will come face-to-face with this question—and if extinctions play out in your local ecosystems, the effects might be quite personal.
So bringing this discussion back to the vaquita, vaquitas prey on fishes and squid. Without the check the vaquita provides on these populations, squid and fish numbers will increase, and if something doesn’t fill the niche left open by the vaquita’s absence, the prey the squids and fish consume will have added pressure on them—and the effects cascade down the food chain.
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The vaquita’s extinction will also represent a significant moment in North American ecological history—namely the first North American mammal to go extinct since the sea mink in 1894, more than 100 years ago, which was the only one since European settlement.
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So what do we do now? How can we conserve what’s left of the vaquita population? Scientists and environmentalists have come up with a number of ideas, and most are commonsensical.
Since the fate of the vaquita is closely tied to that of the totoaba and the gillnets used to catch them, solutions should begin there.
First, we need to enforce the laws related to totoaba fishing and the laws associated with banned gillnets. Other measures that follow include capturing and charging totoaba poachers, and cracking down on the totoaba swim bladder trade by coordinating law enforcement among the governments of Mexico and the U.S., on the source side, and the final destination of the swim bladder trade in China. The goal should be the shutdown the swim bladder trade, but if the totoaba catch is still necessary, it’s important to know that the species can be farmed.
Secondly, find a way to support the fishermen who depend on the totoaba for their livelihood, that is, we need to develop payouts and other economic incentives that allow fishermen to spend their time removing gillnets—rather than setting them. Over the long term, investments in the educational system in cities and towns of the northern Gulf of California will help residents pursue alternative careers and livelihoods. Such investment, combined with subsidies designed to wean local fishers off fishing, could very well reduce overall fishing pressure, but it will take time to implement.
Thirdly, there may be a way to develop “vaquita-safe” fishing gear down the road, which could allow other species to be harvested without harming the vaquita.
Several of these solutions must be part of a comprehensive protection plan that goes into effect no later than the fall of 2019. We need to do this in order to save the vaquita—before the totoaba return to the northern Gulf of California in November, so there’s really not much time.
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If Mexican authorities can give the vaquita effective protection, scientists believe that the porpoise might just have a chance. Because of the vaquita’s low reproductive rate—there’s a maximum of only one offspring per female per year—the protection plan would need to be in place and enforced for several years before vaquita numbers rebound to safe levels.
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Thanks for listening today. I hope you learned something new. Most importantly, I hope that you learned about the plight of the vaquita and what its extinction could mean for you.
Don’t forget, you can catch up on anything you might have missed on Britannica.com. Learn more about extinction and its causes from our article located at www.britannica.com/science/extinction-biology .
There you can also find other parts of this podcast series.
Losing the Vaquita in the northern Gulf of California: What would it mean?
• Story by: John Rafferty
• Produced by: Kurt Heintz
• This is the first part of the “Postcards from the 6th Mass Extinction” series.
This program is copyrighted by Encyclopaedia Britannica Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
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