Marine scientists last month set out in the Gulf of California looking for vaquita porpoises, small marine mammals they feared might already be extinct.

Instead, they spotted a number of the animals, including mothers with calves, raising hopes that the critically endangered species can survive.

“We’re not sure when we go down there if we’re going to see vaquita again,” said Robert Pitman, a recently retired marine biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Each time, there are fewer and fewer of them. We were quite relieved to see them. We had several sightings over three days. The most we saw in one time was six separate animals, which gives us some slim amount of hope.”

Nonetheless, they said the trip also brought discouraging news, as observers saw scores of illegal fishing vessels in areas set aside for vaquita.


“At least one day we saw over 80 fishers there,” said Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, head of the Marine Mammal Research Group for the Mexican National Commission of Natural Protected Areas.

Vaquita are the world’s smallest cetacean and most endangered marine mammal, and live in shallow waters off the northern Gulf of California in Mexico. Grayish colored, with delicate features and dark marks around their eyes and mouth, they measure up to 5 feet long, and weigh about 110 pounds.

They’re resilient animals and versatile predators that eat two dozen different types of fish and squid, Rojas-Bracho said. Left alone, they’re well-adapted to the rich marine ecosystem they inhabit.


Their populations have plunged, however, as vaquita become entangled in gillnets set by fishermen in the upper Gulf. That has worsened as an illicit market has grown for another endangered species endemic to the region, the giant totoaba fish. Poachers catch those fish in order to export their lucrative swim bladders, and vaquita become trapped and drown in the totoaba nets.

Every loss of vaquita is a critical blow to the species’ recovery. Marine biologists estimate there are fewer than 20 of the porpoises left, and say they could even number in the single digits. Although Mexican environmental laws prohibit fishing in the federally protected Vaquita Refuge, researchers said they aren’t enforced.

“There are laws on the books, but there’s no serious protection,” Pitman said.

Beyond the lack of enforcement, Rojas-Bracho said, are active efforts to sabotage monitoring and recovery of the species. Although some Gulf fishermen interested in conservation and sustainable fisheries assist scientists in their efforts to protect vaquita, others have damaged or stolen the equipment they use to do so, he said.


“In recent times, because of the increase of illegal fishing, we are in a difficult crossroads,” he said. “There are illegal fishers sabotaging our monitoring program. What they do is they vandalize our monitoring equipment, and they steal our equipment, because we have lines and ropes, and they use that for fishing.”

Without acoustic monitoring gear, Rojas-Bracho said, researchers had to use visual observations to survey vaquita this year, and they were joyful to see a number of healthy animals. On one day, they saw six distinct animals in two groups, Rojas-Bracho said. Over the course of the trip, they spotted three mother and calf pairs.

“So the good news is they are producing calves,” he said. “And we have the survivors who have been able to survive all these years, and it’s important to protect them, because the survival of vaquita depends on these individuals we have now.”

In recent years, they learned other potentially good news about the species. Scientists had assumed that vaquita mothers only calved every other year, which would allow their population to expand at 4 percent a year, given proper protection.


In 2017 and 2018, however, they saw the same female with two separate calves, suggesting that vaquita may breed annually, potentially doubling that rate of growth, Rojas-Bracho said. Pitman cautioned that researchers aren’t certain that annual breeding is the norm, noting that the female who gave birth two years in a row may have lost a calf, and become pregnant again the next year.

If they can breed annually, however, that’s important, because captive breeding has been a nonstarter. A risky effort to breed vaquita in captivity failed, when a female animal died shortly after she was captured in 2017.

The key to vaquita recovery is clearing the waters of hazardous fishing gear, researchers said. They’re testing out different rigs that would not entangle the porpoises, but those haven’t been approved and made available yet, Rojas-Bracho said. Getting the right gear in place is essential to the survival of both fishermen and vaquita, he said.

“Conservation biology means having sustainable fisheries, and having vaquita survive,” Rojas-Bracho said. “It’s not one or the other. And if we have alternative gear, it’s just a matter of the political will to do it.”


Moreover, the researchers said, the problem can’t be addressed merely in terms of dollars and pesos. The disappearance of a species is an ecological and ethical casualty that transcends balance sheets, they said.

“We are working our way towards an impoverished planet,” Pitman said. “There’s money to be made chopping down all the forests, and killing off all the wildlife. And it’s extremely shortsighted, but that’s what we do as humans.”

Vaquita are collateral damage to the illicit fishing trade, but humans may eventually pay the price as well, Rojas-Bracho said.

“You cannot tell a species to justify their existence, in terms of human needs,” he said. “If you think only of the utility of species, then the world is going to look like the parking lot of any supermarket in the U.S.”