Campaigners mount last-ditch attempt to save 30 vaquita porpoises left in wild

Mexico’s vaquita marina is edging closer to extinction as scientists warned on Wednesday that only 30 were left despite navy efforts to intercept illegal fishing nets killing the world’s smallest porpoise.

“The already desperate situation has worsened, despite existing conservation measures and current enforcement efforts,” said the report by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA).

“At the current rate of loss, the vaquita will likely decline to extinction by 2022, unless the current gillnet ban is maintained and effectively enforced.”

An analysis of acoustic data from the upper Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico found that, as of November, only about 30 vaquitas likely remained in their habitat, the report said.

A previous census between September and December 2015 had found around 60 vaquitas. There were 200 of them in 2012 and 100 in 2014.

Authorities say the vaquitas have been dying for years in gillnets that are meant to illegally catch another endangered specie, a large fish called the totoaba, which is used in soup in Asia.

In a possibly last-ditch effort to save the vaquita, scientists plan, after getting government approval, to capture specimens and put them in an enclosure in the Gulf of California where they can reproduce.

Some environmentalists oppose this because of the risk that vaquitas, which only exist in the Gulf of California, could die in the process.

“Illegal fishing continues and if we don’t capture them, they will die anyway,” said CIRVA chairman Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho.

CIRVA recommends “urgently” locating and putting vaquitas in a temporary sanctuary this spring, and keep them there for up to one year. Rojas-Bracho said the program could begin in the fall, around October.

President Enrique Pena Nieto deployed the navy in 2015 to stop illegal fishing, increased the vaquita protection area and imposed a twoyear ban on gillnets. Drones joined the effort last year.

But in a report CIRVA said that during 15 days in October and November last year, 105 pieces of illegal, abandoned or derelict fishing gear were found.

“This shows that illegal fishing activities, particularly the setting of large-mesh gillnets for totoaba, continue at alarming levels within the range of the vaquita (habitat),” the report said.

CIRVA said the government should speed up efforts to teach alternative fishing methods to local fishermen. Pena Nieto earmarked $70 million to help fishermen during the ban.