Featured Image Credit: Earth Island Institute
By Alice Morris
The vaquita may have just gotten one last chance at survival.
The U.S. government plans to spend $600,000 on a breeding program for the critically endangered species.
The porpoise has been pushed to the brink of extinction by illegal gillnet fishing in Mexican waters, and today there are only 30 individuals left in the world.
For the past two years, volunteers from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have been working to remove as many nets as possible from Mexican waters.
“It’s been very successful,” says Captain Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd president and founder. “We’ve taken 450 illegal nets out of the water along with long lines. We’ve caught numerous poachers with our drones and night vision.”
The U.S. government’s plans will be put into action this October when an international team of scientists attempts to capture ten vaquitas in the wild and place them in seaside breeding pens on the Sea of Cortez.
The conservation plan will cost $600,000. An estimated $415,000 of the plan’s budget will go towards training bottlenose dolphins to track the porpoises and transport them to the Sea of Cortez. Another $198,294 will be spent employing a team of scientists from NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla.
Meanwhile, the Mexican government has pledged $3 million to construct breeding pens near San Felipe.
Not everyone is in favor of the plan, which will be funded by U.S. taxpayers. Captain Watson doubts a captive breeding program will work, since no one has ever been able to capture a vaquita alive.
“I would recommend they spend that money on enforcement to stop these poachers from going in there,” he says.
NOAA’s Barbara Taylor disagrees.
“It’s already very late in the game to be taking animals out (of the wild) and we just can’t afford to wait another year to see whether a miracle happens and the gill nets is actually stopped.”