Critically Endangered

Given the 45% annual decline estimated in 2018, most people expected Mexico’s vaquita porpoise to already be extinct.  Scientists have just seen (May 2023) about the same number of vaquitas they saw in 2019 and 2021 in a small area in the far northern Gulf...

by Kristin Nowell, Cetacean Action Treasury   In 2022 there was a major new development in the Zero Tolerance Area (ZTA), the 225 km2 polygon inside Mexico’s Vaquita Refuge in the Upper Gulf of California.  The ZTA, which was delineated to encompass all recent vaquita sightings and...

Totoaba begin spawning in December in the shallow waters where the last vaquitas survive.  With only around ten vaquitas left, it was hoped that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) would use its authority and motivate Mexico to stop the illegal trade...

  A new report reveals evidence that many pangas have continued to use the ZTA (mostly for gillnetting). Observations of this illegal activity were made both from the sea by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and from land by ZTA Watch.  Pangas were present inside the...

[caption id="attachment_375681" align="alignright" width="300"] Mother and calf vaquita surface near San Felipe, Mexico. Credit: Paula Olson[/caption] New research shows that the endangered vaquita in the Gulf of California in Mexico remains genetically healthy enough for the species to recover if illegal gillnetting stops killing them.  The paper, “The...