Featured Image Credit: wildfor.life
By: Sarah Sharkey
Help is on the way for the critically endangered vaquita porpoise. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has dispatched two ships, the M/V Farley Mowat and the M/V John Paul DeJoria. The two ships are coming from the Caribbean after helping decimated islands deal with the aftermath of Hurricane’s Maria and Irma.
These ships will be a real life line for the vaquita porpoise as it struggles just to remain in existence on our planet. These porpoises are the smallest marine mammal in the world at around 5 feet long, but unfortunately also the most endangered marine mammal in the ocean today.
Reasons for its decline are its increased susceptibility to gillnets (which are actually illegal!) Poachers use these nets to pull a different endangered species out of the water, the totoaba bass. These fish are caught for the unfounded healing powers of its swim bladder.
The Sea Shepherd’s boats have been able to confiscate hundreds of nets and use drone technology to find poachers at night. Captain Paul Watson had his to say about the situation “If not for the confiscation of hundreds of nets and our drone interventions in finding the poachers at night, the vaquita would now be extinct. There are some people who say this is a lost cause and that extinction is inevitable. We disagree.”
Let’s hope that their efforts combined with others will be enough to save this panda of the sea.
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