The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has issued the first “extinction alert” in its 70-year history, to warn of the danger facing the vaquita, of which only 10 individuals survive in the Gulf of California or Sea of Cortez in Mexico.
Key points
Numbers have fallen from a population of approximately 570 in 1997 to around 10 animals in 2018.
- Vaquita porpoise is the world’s tiniest and most critically endangered marine mammal.
- It has been driven to the edge of extinction due to entanglement in fishing nets known as “gillnets”, which are now illegal in the area.
- IWC said extinction of the porpoise was inevitable unless all gillnets were replaced with alternative fishing gear that protected it and the livelihoods of fishers.
- The porpoises, which measure about 1.2-1.5 metres, become entangled and die in gillnets, which are flat fishing nets suspended vertically in the water.
- These nets are used by poachers to hunt the totoaba, an endangered fish prized for its swim bladder in Chinese medicine and sold at vast profits on the black market in China and Hong Kong.
