The vaquita (Phocoena sinus) is considered the world’s rarest marine mammal. This smallest cetacean lives in a highly limited
area of the Gulf of California. It is
routinely caught in fishing nets, particularly gill nets. Gill nets often set illegally by fishing
pirates looking to catch totoaba
(Totoaba macdonaldi), the largest member of the drum (bass) family Sciaenidae.
Both the vaquita and the once massively over-fished totoaba are Critically Endangered
species, supposedly protected by a raft of national and international
bans. Bans which are routinely ignored
by commercial fishermen and flouted by illegal fishing operations in search of
a single organ from the totoaba’s body.
In China, the totoaba’s swim bladder is considered a cure for a variety
of ailments. So, just as rhinos are killed
for their horn powder, the totoaba are killed for something that has no actual
medicinal value. However, the bladders
routinely sell in China for thousands of dollar per kilogram. The vaquita is being driven to extinction as
collateral damage by the illegal fishing for the totoaba.
In 2014, researchers counted just 100 remaining members of the Mexican species — down from 200 in 2012 — and estimated that the population would decline by 20 percent more each year. Sure enough, on Friday the Mexican government reported that just 60 porpoises remain, despite a May 2015 two-year ban on the use of gillnets that frequently kill them.
Despite the ban on gillnet fishing in the Northern Gulf of
California, the only marine habitat of both the vaquita and the totoaba, vaquitas continue to die in illegal gill nets.
...three dead vaquitas were found in March, all having died from entanglement in gillnets probably set for totoaba. Forty-two illegal nets were removed over the past four months by the enforcement team of the Navy and Sea Shepherd’s Operation Milagro. “The lure of big money for totoaba swim bladders killed at least three more vaquitas, individuals sorely needed to prevent the species’ slide toward extinction,” said Frances Gulland of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, who performed necropsies on two of the carcasses.
As with rhino horn powder, Chinese enforcement is incredibly lax regarding the sale of the dried totoaba swim bladders.
“The vaquita’s extinction clock stands at one minute to midnight and the species is being pushed into oblivion by the demand of a relatively small number of Chinese consumers of totoaba maw,” said Clare Perry, the team leader of the Environmental Investigation Agency’s (EIA) oceans campaign.
The EIA has just released a new report on the trade that finds totoaba swim bladders are still openly sold in Guangzhou and Hong Kong as well as online.
Perry said that the swim bladders are largely bought by wealthy Chinese as “collection items or gifts” and even as financial investments.
The investigation revealed one retail outlet selling a totoaba fish bladder weighing 446g for HKD500,000 (USD64,500), while another retailer offered an additional HKD2,000 (USD248) smuggling fee to carry the specimen to mainland China. Greenpeace researchers were told that gangs in northern Mexico source the totoaba, which are then traded through middlemen in major cities in the United States’ West Coast.
“Hong Kong prides itself as an open, free trade city, but this comes with a cost. The city has become a hub for illegal wildlife trade, with devastating results as far away as Mexico for the nearly extinct vaquita.”
Maybe we can't save the vaquito or the totoaba, but what does it say about us as a species that we have the power to do something and we are unwilling to make the effort?
What can you do?
Sea Shepherd has been working with Mexican authorities to patrol the northern Gulf of California. Called Operation Milagro (Miracle)
Force Change has a petition for the Chinese Minister of Commerce. You can sign it here. Not that I would expect much.
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