Species News

As July comes to an end, so does our Species of the Month blog for the vaquita. As a final entry, Cheryl Butner from ¡Viva Vaquita! tells us more about the efforts of the Mexican Government and the measures in place to try and protect and conserve the remaining vaquita.

I hope you've enjoyed learning more about this special porpoise, one of the smallest of all cetaceans, if so next month you're in for a treat as we focus on the largest of all members of the toothed whales .... the orca!

Now that the baiji has been declared “functionally extinct”, the vaquita has taken the unfortunate role as the most endangered cetacean in the world. In the case of the baiji, the Chinese government did very little to prevent the extinction of the species. Luckily for the vaquita, the Mexican government has made a strong commitment - in fact their current effort to save the vaquita is the largest conservation program ever in Mexico.

The vaquita was only first described by scientists in 1958, and they quickly realized that the amount of vaquitas being caught and killed in gillnets was a concern. However, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the first major steps were made for their conservation. In 1993 the Mexican government created the Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta Biosphere Reserve to protect the two rare species endemic to the region: the vaquita and the totoaba fish. Then in 1994, Mexican authorities listed the vaquita as an endangered species.

In 1996 the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA) was created to develop a recovery plan based on the best scientific evidence available, while also considering socio-economic aspects of their conservation policies. During its’ first meeting, CIRVA determined that incidental mortality in gillnets represents the greatest immediate threat to the survival of the species and that vaquita abundance was probably in the low hundreds. At later CIRVA meetings it was determined that by-catch of vaquitas must be reduced to zero, alternative fishing techniques should be developed to replace gillnets, and the international community should be invited to help in vaquita recovery efforts.

In 2005, on CIRVA’S recommendation, the Mexican government created a Vaquita Refuge that encompasses the area of where 80% of vaquita sightings have occurred. Gillnets and shrimp trawling have been banned from the refuge and PROFEPA, Mexico’s environmental law enforcement agency, patrols within the refuge to ensure that no activities that could harm the vaquita are taking place.



With the implementation of the gillnet ban and other fishery restrictions, the Mexican government wanted to ensure that the displaced fisherman were still able to support themselves and their families. In 2007, Mexico’s president announced the Species Conservation Action Program (PACE) for the vaquita. PACE designed mechanisms to remove the fishing gear that threatens the vaquita by: (1) enforcing the existing bans on gillnet fishing in the Biosphere Reserve and Refuge area, and possibly expanding the ban to a larger protected area; (2) encouraging alternative methods of fishing that do not catch vaquitas; and (3) providing economic compensation to fishermen, including a buyout program and assistance with starting alternative businesses.

The buyout program is voluntary and invites the artisanal fishing community to engage in activities other than fishing, with government support. Those wishing to continue fishing have to be involved in an alternative fishing gear program. Through this program the Mexican Government provides financial and technical resources to the fishing community to find new fishing methods that do not harm the vaquita. The following results have been achieved with the PACE vaquita program using the investments made in 2008: (1) the Vaquita Refuge is essentially free of entangling gillnets and shrimp trawlers; (2) 230 artisanal fishing boats have withdrawn from fishing activities; and (3) 105 artisanal fishing boats are participating in the fishing gear replacement program. This is a good start, but with these small-scale fishing boats numbering in the thousands in this region, there is still much work to be done.

The Mexican government has also implemented vaquita education and outreach efforts in the communities of the northern Gulf of California. Informational signs about the vaquita, the Refuge, and the Biosphere Reserve have been constructed in the malecon/beach areas of San Felipe, El Golfo de Santa Clara, and Puerto Peñasco. The Mexican government has also distributed vaquita brochures in these communities, using featuring a vaquita photo taken by Dr. Tom Jefferson during the 2008 vaquita photographic expedition.



Although the fundamental groundwork has been established to protect the vaquita, much work still needs be done to make its’ range completely gillnet-free, and not much time remains to do it. ¡Viva Vaquita! is proud to support Mexico’s efforts to conserve the species and we advocate that interested members from the science community, conservation organizations, fishing communities, and governmental agencies all work together towards this goal. If these efforts are successful, not only will future generations be able to enjoy this wonderful and unique animal, but Mexico will also be able to hold up the vaquita as the first example of saving a species from accidental entanglement in gillnets - a problem that threatens cetaceans and other animals worldwide.



For more information about these efforts please visit:
The Mexican Government’s Action Plan for the Conservation of the Vaquita (PACE) - in Spanish
¡Viva Vaquita!

Photos taken under permit (Oficio No. DR/488/08) from the Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Resursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), within a natural protected area subject to special management and decreed as such by the Mexican Government.

Cheryl Butner from ¡Viva Vaquita! takes us with her on the recent "Vaquita Expedition" and shares their highs and their lows!

Last month Dr. Tom Jefferson’s team and students from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland traveled back to San Felipe, Baja California on a second vaquita photo expedition. They were hoping to follow up on the success of the 2008 expedition where the first high-quality photos of vaquitas alive in the wild were taken for conservation and educational purposes. I joined the team during the last week to help with outreach and education in the local community.

Once again our boat was the Pancho Villa, a large sportfishing vessel with a higher deck, perfect for marine mammal observation. We chose the month of June because according to weather forecasts it was supposed to be one of the calmest months of the year, and very calm seas are critical for vaquita spotting. For almost the entire 3 weeks we were there the weather was unseasonably windy and the forecasts were pretty much unreliable. Once whitecaps form on the water it’s practically impossible to spot vaquitas at the surface since their dorsal fins are so small.

On days where the weather looked favorable, we would go out early in the morning and search the area around Rocas Consag where vaquita sightings had been made in the past. It seems that vaquitas are scared off by loud noises so once we reached an spot that looked promising we would “stop and drift” - turn off the boat’s engine and depth sounder - and everyone on board would scan the area with binoculars. We would do this several times a day as long as weather conditions were favorable. Often the wind picked up as the day went on, so sometimes we returned to the harbor early when viewing conditions worsened.



The first week was fairly uneventful, we did alot of searching, but had no vaquita sightings. Into the second week we had some interesting ocean visitors like a Bryde’s whale, whale shark, and dozens of bat rays. Later in the expedition we saw two hammerhead sharks, several sea lions, and another shark, which was either a mako or a great white.

Then towards the end of the second week, it happened....
Our captain, Antonio, sighted a vaquita off the port-bow that surfaced twice and avoided the boat. We stopped to search, but at that same moment we were approached by the PROFEPA boat (Mexico’s environmental law enforcement agency) asking to see our permits. The area where we had been searching is a federally-protected Vaquita Refuge and PROFEPA patrols the refuge to ensure that no activities that could harm the vaquita are taking place. By the time the agents reviewed our paperwork, the vaquita was gone. No one had been able to get any pictures. It was bad timing, but good to see the PROFEPA agents doing their job.

During the third and final week we continued to search out on the water as often as the weather would permit, and we did have a couple of fairly calm days. On these days we would stay out 12+ hours, searching with high hopes, but we didn’t have any more sightings after the brief encounter in the second week.

Whenever we were not out on the water, I was in town talking with people about the vaquita. I distributed flyers to hotels, restaurants, and stores in San Felipe trying to spread the word about the vaquita and how to help prevent their extinction. San Felipe, located only a 4 hour drive from San Diego, is a popular tourist destination and has a large number of American residents. I found that the vast majority of people I met in the Mexican and American communities of San Felipe knew what a vaquita was and were supportive of saving the species. One day I had a very interesting encounter with two local fishermen who had been fishing off of San Felipe for 30 years. They did not believe that vaquitas even exist because they had never seen one in all their time out on the water! Unfortunately this is a fairly common belief in some communities of the northern Gulf of California and one that the Mexican government is trying to change by using the photos from Tom’s 2008 vaquita photo expedition.

With only a couple of days remaining we received some very bad news, the Pancho Villa had an engine problem and would be out of commission for the rest of our stay. We were all very disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to make a last effort to find and photograph vaquitas, but we decided to make the best of it and focus on more outreach instead.

On our last night there we were invited to El Dorado Ranch (a popular housing community north of town) to give a presentation about the vaquita. We had a great turnout – over 60 people attended – and the audience asked Tom a lot of excellent questions. It was wonderful to meet so many people interested in saving the vaquita. After the presentation our team headed over to La Vaquita Restaurant for dinner, a tradition usually reserved for after a successful day of vaquita spotting and photographing. It was a very good decision to go there anyway because the restaurant manager ended up introducing us to some great contacts who also happened to be dining there and were interested in our work – including the local PROFEPA agents.



It was a great end to a great expedition! Although we were not able to get the new pictures we had hoped for, we were very happy with the success of the outreach and education component of the project. We made many key connections for our next expedition and were glad to find that the majority of residents in San Felipe are supportive of saving the vaquita. Without the support of the communities in the northern Gulf of California, vaquita conservation would not be possible! And we support all of the hard work that the Mexican government is doing to save their country’s very special porpoise.



If you would like to read more about Expedition Vaquita 2010, please visit our official blog

Now that we know more about the background to these special little porpoises, vaquita researcher Thomas Jefferson tells us more about the importance of photographing them alive and in the wild and shares his experiences of the 2008 expedition to capture some of the first images of these porpoises.

The vaquita (Phocoena sinus) has been recognized as one of the World’s rarest and most vulnerable mammalian species since its scientific discovery just a bit over fifty years ago. Porpoise deaths in gillnet fisheries are unsustainable and are clearly causing the small population to decline. The vaquita is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

With the recent discovery that the baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) of China’s Yangtze River is now extinct, the vaquita is becomes the most endangered cetacean species in the world. The vaquita population has declined by more than 50% since 1997, when the first large-scale survey of the entire range was conducted. Current population size of the vaquita has been estimated by combining information from a visual and acoustic survey conducted in 2008. It was estimated that only about 245 vaquitas remained in 2008, and if the decline is continuing, then there would likely be no more than 220 left at present!

Back in 2008, efforts to raise public awareness and conserve the vaquita had been limited by the absence of high-quality photo or video images of the animals alive in their natural habitat. Green groups often successfully use images of wildlife to focus their fund-raising efforts and obtain sympathy for endangered species (a clear example is the giant panda, in which images of this large, attractive animal were instrumental in gaining sympathy for its effective conservation).

This had been difficult with the vaquita, which is also a large, attractive animal (and with a unique appearance, quite different from any of the other six porpoise species). Few people realized this, however, as the best available images were blurry, distant photos showing little more than a grainy dot that looked more like a dust particle on the lens than a marine mammal! There were even claims from within Mexico that the vaquita was not real - a ‘mythical creature,’ further hampering conservation efforts. Showing the world what the vaquita looked like, alive and in its natural habitat, would be critical to efforts to raise the funds needed to save the species. In addition, photography could help us to learn more about the biology of this poorly-known species.

The 2008 Photographic Expedition

So, with funding from several organizations (including WDCS), I set out in late 2008 with my colleagues Tom Kieckhefer, Paula Olson, and Chris Johnson, to see if we could rectify this problem. From 2-30 October 2008, we conducted small-vessel surveys for vaquitas from San Felipe. Each day, weather permitting, we traveled offshore to the region between San Felipe and Rocas Consag. We searched for vaquitas while the vessel was moving, but also periodically conducted ‘stop and drift’ searches, in which the vessel’s engine and depth sounder were shut down, and 3-6 people searched the area with naked eye and binoculars.



We used two boats: the Emma Luz, a small 21 ft. outboard motor boat, called a panga, and the Pancho Villa, a 57-foot sportfishing vessel based in Puerto Peñasco. The Pancho Villa was much more stable and seaworthy, with a higher platform and much greater capability for observer observations. It proved to be a better type of platform for the searches. After 17 days worrying days of not seeing a single vaquita, we finally had a flat calm day and our first sightings on 18 October. We hit the jackpot! Over the next 12 days we had 12 more sightings…

We got photos of vaquitas during eight of the sightings. Most photos were very distant, but we did obtain some high-quality images that have proven useful for promoting vaquita conservation (see our website www.vivavaquita.org). Also, we obtained images that were adequate for photo-identification. This represents the first time that vaquitas have been photo-identified.



Despite the challenges and difficulties evidenced by not seeing vaquitas for 17 days, this project demonstrated that (with a great deal of patience and some luck) vaquitas can be photographed and that photo-identification of individual porpoises is possible. Many of our colleagues doubted this was possible, and after 17 days with no sightings, we were beginning to doubt it ourselves. The animals are incredibly cryptic and rare, so a great deal of time will generally be needed. However, the critically-endangered status of the species make this worthwhile. Through future such efforts, we hope to help prevent the extinction of this wonderful and mysterious little porpoise!

Photos taken under permit (Oficio No. DR/488/08) from the Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Resursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), within a natural protected area subject to special management and decreed as such by the Mexican Government.

July is the turn of the smallest and until recently, one of the least well known porpoises, the vaquita. WDCS has previously funded work on these endangered cetaceans and to learn more about these special animals we turn to the experts from ¡Viva Vaquita! who are studying them in the field and working to ensure that they're still here in years to come.

The smallest porpoise in the world is also the most endangered cetacean on the planet. Meet the vaquita, just discovered in the 1950s by the late Dr. Ken Norris, from the University of California at Santa Cruz. In less than 60 years, the vaquita is now on the verge of extinction.

Just four years ago, the Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, became extinct through massive habitat destruction in China. The vaquita, however, lives in pristine waters in the Gulf of California, and does not face extinction from environmental causes. The threat to vaquita survival is the high occurrence of incidental catch in the nets of fishermen, who are primarily fishing for shrimp. With only about 220 remaining, the vaquita lives in a relatively small area in the Gulf of California off the coast of San Felipe, which is only about a 4 hour drive from the United States/Mexican border.

Much of its range is protected as a Biosphere Preserve, but many are accidently taken in nets outside of the Preserve’s boundaries. The vaquita has been designated as a highly endangered species, yet it is difficult to patrol the area where they still exist. It was a tragedy to lose the baiji, but it should not be a precedent to lose another cetacean species. The vaquita can be saved! The Mexican and US governments have been involved and need to be encouraged to continue their protection of the vaquita range. The Biosphere Preserve should be expanded to cover the entire vaquita range, which is less than the size of Los Angeles. Fishing practices need to be changed, including buy outs of fishermen and the switch to escapable, non-lethal nets. It is recognized that there are not many sources of livelihood in that particular part of Baja California, but perhaps more eco-tourism and conservation-related businesses can grow to replace dependence on the fishing economy. Avoid purchasing seafood from companies that buy shrimp and fish caught in vaquita habitat. Monetary donations are being collected to help local fishermen find alternative methods of employment that is not lethal to vaquitas. Funds are also needed for monitoring the waters of the vaquita range to ensure that their environment is safe and free of nets. It is extremely important to create awareness and educate people about the plight of this charismatic animal before it is too late.

No good photographs of the vaquita existed prior to 2008. Dr. Tom Jefferson, a marine mammal scientist and graduate of Moss Landing Marine Labs, and his research team, travelled to Baja to gather information and start a catalog to identify individual porpoises from their unique dorsal fins. After 17 days in the vaquita range, the team finally managed to locate and photograph some of the elusive animals. Their photographs show a diminutive porpoise with black eye patches and lips, with a pronounced dorsal fin. Previous photos of the vaquita were of dead animals taken on land after removal from fishing nets.



Many environmental groups are starting to become aware of the consequences of ignoring the danger to the vaquita. With so few animals remaining, even a take as small as a few individuals per year adversely impacts the population. The vaquita, or ‘little cow’ is a uniquely Mexican animal, yet many residents consider it a mythical animal because they are so rarely seen. On the Monterey Peninsula, California, a group of conservationists associated with the American Cetacean Society and Save the Whales have formed a ¡Viva Vaquita! Task Force. World renowned sculptor, Randy Puckett, whose whales grace the ceiling of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, has designed a bronze vaquita sculpture, with proceeds to benefit vaquita conservation measures in Baja. The group has also set up vivavaquita.org and Facebook page to share information about the highly endangered species.

Photos taken under permit (Oficio No. DR/488/08) from the Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Resursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), within a natural protected area subject to special management and decreed as such by the Mexican Government.

For all you folk "on the ball" out there, you may have noticed that June is now behind us and we've moved on to July and technically, we should therefore be moving onto a new species, which we will be doing ... but only once we've closed down this "species blog" and heard from one last humpback researcher out in the field.

June turned out to be quite a month for the humpback whale, and unfortunately not all of it positive. Greenland (or should we say Denmark) were successful in being allowed by the IWC to add humpbacks to their whaling menu, 9 individuals now have targets on their backs! And of course it's not just Greenland who want to take humpbacks, Japan have them on their list although have to date not actually taken any, and some island nations in the Caribbean are also continuing to take humpbacks under the guide of "subsistence whaling".

However to end the "humpback month" on a more positive note, let's hear about humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere from WDCS's Pacific Islands Programme Lead, Dr. Cara Miller - over to you Cara!

It has been estimated that between 1904 and 1980 more than 200,000 humpback whales were commercially whaled in the Southern Hemisphere. Illegal and unreported takes by Russia from shortly after World War II until the late 1970s were estimated to include over 45,000 humpbacks. A majority of these whales were believed to come from the Antarctic foraging grounds which humpback whales from Australia and Oceania utilize during their yearly migration south from their warmer breeding grounds. Given this background, it is not surprising that the Oceania subpopulation of humpback whales has recently been classified as Endangered by the IUCN. This classification was largely based on the small number of individuals present on tropical breeding grounds in comparison to pre-whaling abundance estimates, including comparisons between historical and recent land-based counts conducted in Fiji and other Pacific Islands. In the 1960s some land-points in Fiji saw hundreds of whales swimming past every week during the peak migration period. However, last year only about 20 humpbacks were counted in three full weeks of surveys. Obviously there has been a dramatic decline.



To continue monitoring and study of the Endangered Oceania humpback whale subpopulations WDCS is working in partnership with the Government of Fiji Fisheries Department and WWF with a recently funded grant from the Australian Government. The upcoming 3-year systematic and consistent land-based surveys will provide a valuable index of humpback whale migration through Fijian waters. This project will document important breeding grounds of humpback whales and also assist in unraveling the pattern of population structure of Fijian humpback whales in the context of the Oceania subpopulation. In addition, our findings will aid in understanding the long-lasting impact that Southern Hemisphere whaling has imparted on this population. The major research techniques that we will be using include land-based counts, photo-identification of flukes and collection of song. Furthermore, all cetacean species sighted during these surveys will be documented to increase understanding of cetacean biodiversity in Fijian waters.



Important over-arching components of this project is to support the development and build the capacity of national government staff and researchers, and also to be relatively low-cost and easy to replicate to ensure sustainability over the longer term. Therefore, one of the key activities we’ll be involved in leading up to the surveys will be to provide all volunteers, government staff and other observers with training on cetacean species identification, behaviour, data collection, research methods, and background information on regional cetacean conservation initiatives.
Monitoring of humpbacks also represents an active implementation of the SPREP whale and dolphin action plan as well as the Convention of Migratory Species Memorandum of Understanding for the Conservation of Cetaceans and their Habitats in the Pacific Islands Region. In addition, the project will be linked with networks, organizations and departments including other Fiji government departments, local communities, Fiji Islands Voyaging Society, the Fiji cetaceans sightings network, the Fiji tourism sector, major boating clubs, and the University of the South Pacific.