After a recent survey, researchers estimate they saw only six to eight individual vaquitas in Mexico’s upper Gulf of California, the lowest result ever recorded.
Still, the scientific team and the Mexican government cautioned that the population had not necessarily declined, emphasizing that more vaquitas may exist outside the search area.
The vaquita (Phocoena sinus) has been driven to the brink of extinction by gillnet fishing, a type of stationary trawling where a net is left hanging vertically in the water like a wall for fish to swim into.
Vaquitas live only in the Gulf of California, the body of water that separates Baja California from the Mexican mainland.
Vaquita is the world’s smallest porpoise. It is also the world’s rarest marine mammal, and is on the edge of extinction.
It is a Critically Endangered animal. People use the terms dolphins, porpoises, and whales to describe marine mammals belonging to the order Cetacea.
