Vaquita – Last Chance for the Desert Porpoise

TakePart.com published a new article entitled – “Vaquita: Will a Tiny Porpoise Be the Next Endangered Species to Go?”

With the arrival of Endangered Species Day, it’s time to shed some light on a startling reality: the world’s most critically endangered marine mammal is a species you’ve never heard of that lives just a day’s drive south of the U.S. border.

It’s not a rare whale or a specialized dolphin somewhere far out in the open ocean—it’s a tiny, retriever-sized porpoise that lives in the Gulf of California, a mere 200 miles from San Diego.

It’s called the vaquita, and it is so critically endangered that the loss of just a few dozen individuals could spell doom for the species in a short span of years. Only about 150 of them remain, living in a small section of ocean in the crook of the Baja Peninsula. Vaquita numbers have been in decline for decades due to a familiar threat: fishing nets.

Another attempt has been to develop alternative fishing and shrimping gear. This has been less effective. Still, Rojas says, they’re willing to try anything. His team has already attempted shrimp pots designed by Canadian experts as a replacement for the gill nets, and next month will try fishing nets developed by a group from Sweden.

In addition, this summer Rojas, Taylor and other vaquita experts will embark on a long-term study of vaquita by placing acoustic “sea pods” in the water that automatically record porpoise activity to help better map where they live and move.

Read the entire blog:

http://www.takepart.com/news/2010/05/20/vaquita-the-most-endangered-animal-youve-never-heard-of

About Chris Johnson

Chris Johnson has written 32 post in this blog.

A filmmaker, photographer and digital producer based in Melbourne Australia.

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