Ban placed on imported fish caught with gill nets
In response to conservation groups, the U.S. Court of International Trade has ordered a ban on importation of fish and shellfish caught in the Upper Gulf of California with gill nets.
The court issued the order to the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Department of Homeland Security late last month.
Among groups seeking the ban was the Center for Biological Diversity, which said in a news release that the nets threaten the already endangered vaquita, a tiny snub-nosed porpoise found only in the gulf.
The gill nets are vertical nets predominately used by the fisherman seeking other species. Nonetheless, the vaquita have also become entangled in the nets.
“With only 15 vaquita remaining, nearly half the population dies in these fishing nets every year,” the center said in a news release. “Absent immediate additional protection, the small purpose could be extinct by 2021.”
Fishermen in El Golfo de Santa Clara say the vaquita’s decline has to do with factors other than the net.
Many of vaquita has been caught during illegal fishing in the gulf for another species, the totoaba, they say.
Also, they say, now that
the Colorado River no longer flows all the way south to the gulf, vaquita no longer have a source of food and nutrients that thrived where fresh and salt water blended.
Giulia Good Stefani, attorney for the Natural Resources
Defense Council, argued for the ban before the Court of International Trade.
“The prohibition of fish and shellfish captured with gill nets in the Gulf of California in Mexico is the lifeline the vaquita needs desperately,” she said.
“Together our organizations have spent more than a decade working to
save the vaquita, and never has extinction been felt so close. The smallest and most threatened porpoise in the world has what may be its last chance.”
The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Animal Protection Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Gill nets are vertical nets that catch fish by the gills. The nets are used in the upper gulf to catch such species as shrimp, corvina, mackerel and other species, but environmental groups says indiscriminate use of the nets has led to the capture of other species the fishermen weren’t seeking, such as the vaquita.