Effort to Catch, Protect Mexico's Remaining Vaquitas Mark Stevenson - The Associated Press
go to original December 16, 2016

The Sam Simon has arrived in Mexico to join the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society-led campaign, Operation Milagro III. A partnership between Sea Shepherd and the Mexican authorities, Operation Milagro III intercepts, intervenes and interrupts any illegal activities found in the Vaquita refuge in the Sea of Cortez. (Sea Shepherd Conservation Society)

So few of Mexico's vaquita porpoises remain that the international committee to protect the endangered species is preparing to catch and enclose as many as it can in a last-ditch effort to save it.

According to rough estimates, only about three dozen of the world's smallest porpoise remain in the upper Gulf of California, the only place it lives. With numbers falling by 40 percent annually, there could be as few as eight breeding females left. The species has never been held successfully in captivity.

Catch-and-enclose is risky; the few remaining females could die during capture, and some experts oppose the plan.

Fisherman lured by Chinese demand for a fish that swims in the same waters have apparently defeated Mexico's efforts to protect the vaquita in its natural habitat.

Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, chair of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita, said an international team is being formed to launch the capture program in the spring.

"It would involve locating them, capturing them and putting them in some kind of protective area," Rojas-Bracho said, adding that the current plan envisions putting them in a floating enclosure or pen in a protected bay where they would not be endangered by fishing nets.

Read the rest at ABC News

Related: Mexico Removes 'Ghost' Nets to Save Tiny Porpoise (Agence France-Presse)

Related: Will 2017 Be the Year We Lose the World’s Smallest Porpoise? (Motherboard)

Related: Fisheries Service Proposes Overdue Measures to Stop Sea Turtle Deaths (Center for Biological Diversity)

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