The Mexican government is making a final effort to save the vaquita, a tiny porpoise that has been driven to the edge of extinction as a result of illegal fishing for another endangered species that is served as a delicacy in China.
Scientists say that fewer than 100 of the vaquita, a marine mammal, remain in its habitat, the northern Gulf of California. Several thousand fishermen working there depend on the yearly shrimp catch for a modest living.
The fishermen’s gillnets, stretching for miles across the sea, have long been a lethal threat to the vaquita, which become entangled in them and die.
However, over the past few years a new threat has emerged: Illegal fishing for a large fish called the totoaba, whose swim bladder is dried and cooked in soup in China, where some consumers believe it has medicinal properties. The vaquitas are also caught and killed in the nets set for totoaba.
The government’s new policy, which Rafael Pacchiano Alaman, an undersecretary in the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources, announced on Friday, would ban gillnets for two years across 12,950km2 of the upper gulf and compensate the fishermen for their lost catch.
The ban is to take effect later this month, and the government plans to begin paying the first installments of US$72 million in subsidies to fishermen and others who make their living from the shrimp catch. The payments would be spread over two years.
“I really think that this is the last chance, and we had better get our act together,” WWF Mexico director Omar Vidal said, adding that more than two decades of efforts to save the vaquita had slowed but not halted its decline. “I think the government is very serious.”
The two-year moratorium on the use of gillnets would give researchers time to improve vaquita-safe nets that would catch enough shrimp to generate sufficient income for fishermen. Fishermen complain that the nets that are now available do not allow them to make enough money to feed their families.
Enforcement of the ban is expected to be a bigger challenge. Officials have failed to enforce past limits on gillnet fishing, and boats regularly sneak into what had once been a small vaquita refuge of about 1,243km2.
The totoaba trade has raised the stakes. With swim bladders fetching as much as US$10,000 per pound, organized crime is controlling the business, paying the fishermen, smuggling the fish bladders to California and shipping them to China.
Pacchiano said that the navy would work with environmental and fishing officials to stop illegal fishing and enforce the gillnet ban. Drones, satellites and a fleet of patrol boats would help enforce it, he said.
“The federal government’s initiatives are positive, but more is needed,” Greenpeace Mexico’s Silvia Diaz said. Conservationists called for additional measures, like a broader development plan for fishing communities to promote tourism.
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