(Animals) The final lunge to the vaquita marina

[Askor lml]

Scientists estimate that only seven to eight specimens of the marine mammal remain. The inaction of the Mexican authorities against illegal fishing in its refuge area condemns it to extinction
A vaquita porpoise in the waters of the Upper Gulf of California, in Mexico.

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In the dystopian country that sometimes looks like Mexico, a biologist has to go into exile after receiving threats for trying to prevent the extinction of the vaquita, a small cetacean in the Upper Gulf of California. His apparently harmless work collides with the interests of organized crime, whose tentacles reach almost all extractive activities in the country: clandestine logging, mining… and illegal fishing. The vaquita is not the target of criminals, it is just collateral damage, that euphemism called bycatch. What they seek with their predatory nets is the totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is coveted for its alleged aphrodisiac powers in China, where up to $ 60,000 is paid for it. More than cocaine.

"It is a war between illegal fishing and us, who are trying to protect the species," says Diego Ruiz Sabio from his exile. He prefers not to reveal where he went, but it can be said that far. Enough to avoid swelling the lists of murdered environmental defenders in Mexico. Ruiz Sabio continues to be, even in the distance, co-director of the Whale Museum of La Paz, in Baja California Sur. The institution has spent years removing the gillnets used by poachers, in which the vaquita, the most endangered marine mammal on the planet, gets trapped and dies. But in the battle between environmentalists and organized crime, the latter is winning. An observation cruise funded among others by the Whale Museum revealed last December that the vaquitas po[CENSORED]tion continues to plummet. Now it is estimated that there are between seven and eight left, compared to ten in 2019.

The drop in porpoise numbers in recent decades has been dramatic, brutal. If in 1997 there were almost 600 vaquitas, in 2016 there were 60. Only a year later, they fell by half. At that time, the Chinese market realized that the totoaba, endemic to the same waters as the vaquita, closely resembled a fish used in its traditional medicine that became extinct due to overexploitation. And it became his perfect substitute. Then began a fierce predation controlled by organized crime that has also put the totoaba in danger of extinction. Last November, during the observation cruise, scientists counted 117 boats illegally fishing in the vaquita's refuge area in a single day, well above the 87 they had seen two years earlier. The question then is where are the authorities. “Without a doubt there is an absolute disinterest in the preservation of this species. They believe that it is easier to let it die out and turn the page ”, laments the biologist.
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