A Flicker of Hope for the World’s Rarest Porpoise
The latest report shows that the estimated number of endangered vaquita porpoises has modestly increased
A lone vaquita, Phocoena sinus, in the open sea.
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For the first time since researchers have been tracking the vaquita, the estimated number of individuals of this nearly extinct species of porpoise has increased.
Vaquitas, found only in a 4,000-square-kilometer area of the upper Gulf of California, wedged between Baja California and the Mexican mainland, have been dwindling since a 1997 high of 567 individuals; computer models indicate the population may have decreased by 80 percent between 2011 and 2015. Despite projections that they’d be extinct by 2021, the vaquita is persevering.
A new survey that was conducted over several weeks in September by the Mexican government in collaboration with the nonprofit Sea Shepherd Conservation Society estimates that the population consists of seven to 10 individuals and at least one or two new calves. These numbers, up from 2024’s estimate of six to eight total individuals, reflect a glimmer of hope in what has otherwise been a tragic tale of decline.
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Historically, local shrimp fishers accidentally caught the small porpoises in gill nets, inadvertently killing them. Vaquitas continued to be caught and unintentionally killed when fishers used these nets to target totoaba fish for their swim bladder—the part of a fish that regulates buoyancy—for sale in Chinese black markets. Although gillnets were permanently banned in the Gulf of California in 2017, they continued to be used illegally.
To confront vaquita declines, in 2019 the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species established an agreement to help eliminate supply and demand for totoabas and help remove gill nets from the upper Gulf of California. It also established a zero-tolerance area in the vaquita’s range in which fishing is banned, causing a massive uproar from members of the fishing community, who would be forced out of their historical fishing grounds—and often out of their livelihood.
Ryan Green is a surfer, diver, photographer and science journalist currently based in New York City. She earned her master of science degree in journalism from Columbia University, and her work focuses on oceans and the changes they’re enduring.
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