![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/VaquitaPorpoiseBajaCalif700px.png\"\/)
<\/p>\nTo spot a vaquita porpoise requires calm winds, clear skies and waters smooth as glass. But in September, those conditions were hard to come by off the coast of San Felipe, a small fishing town in Baja California, Mexico. It was hurricane season, and for most of the month strong winds churned up heavy swells as a group of veteran marine mammal researchers conducted an annual survey of the rare marine mammal\u2014a challenging task, even in the best of conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing harder than vaquita to find and to track,\u201d said Barbara Taylor, a biologist from Montana who has been monitoring whales, dolphins and porpoises for more than 30 years. \u201cThey\u2019re really, really difficult to see.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
They are only about 4-5 feet long and surface only briefly to breathe. Their small gray bodies blend in easily with the turbid sea. \u201cIf there\u2019s any swell they just disappear,\u201d said Taylor, who helped lead the survey. Plus, there\u2019s only a few of them left. The vaquita is the most endangered marine mammal on Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Found only in the Upper Gulf of California, the vaquita has been pushed to the brink of extinction by the widespread use of deadly fishing gear called gillnets. These walls of mesh hang like invisible curtains in the sea and are used by fishermen to trap shrimp and fish that become entangled in their webs. But the nets are \u201cnon-selective,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThey just kill everything.\u201d From sharks and rays to whales, sea lions, dolphins and vaquitas, few animals that cross paths with the gear escape its grip. Most suffocate and drown as they struggle to break free.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe greatest risk factor, not only for vaquita, but for all marine mammals, probably seabirds and sea turtles, are gillnets,\u201d said Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a biologist from Mexico, who also helped conduct the survey. He works for Mexico\u2019s National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (CONANP), a federal agency responsible for conserving and managing the country\u2019s natural protected areas.<\/p>\n
Although Mexico permanently banned gillnets nearly 10 years ago, both Rojas-Bracho and Taylor said weak enforcement and a lack of alternative fishing gear have allowed their illegal use to persist, even inside the federally protected vaquita refuge, a 500-square-mile area of water where fishing is supposed to be prohibited.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Annual Vaquita Survey\u00a0<\/p>\n
Annual surveys of the endangered vaquita have become a cornerstone of international efforts to save the species. Since 2018, a team of leading cetacean experts has gathered each year in San Felipe\u2014pausing only during the Covid-19 pandemic\u2014to search for the remaining porpoises. The surveys are designed to track the animals\u2019 health, movements and exposure to illegal fishing activity. Assessing population trends, reproductive success and where the animals face the greatest risk of entanglement within the refuge helps shape conservation strategies, Taylor said.<\/p>\n
This year, to better their chances of finding the elusive animals, they planned one of their longest and most robust surveys yet in collaboration with the Mexican government and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an international nonprofit that runs a year-round campaign to protect the porpoises called Operation Vaquita Defense.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Sea Shepherd is the only organization that maintains a 24\/7 physical presence inside the vaquita refuge, where its crew pulls up gillnets and patrols the area with onboard radar, sonar and drones to detect illegal fishing, which they report to the Mexican Navy so it can intervene.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are like the eyes of the vaquita refuge,\u201d said Andrea Bonilla, the organization\u2019s lead scientist, who helped coordinate logistics for September\u2019s survey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For most of the month, the crew lived and worked on board two Sea Shepherd vessels, the Seahorse and the Bob Barker, named after the late animal rights activist. They used high powered binoculars called \u201cbig eyes\u201d to scan the horizon for glimpses of the porpoises\u2019 dorsal fins slicing through the silty Gulf waters framed by desert mountains.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Read More<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t \t\t\tInside the Fight to Stop the Illegal Trade Driving the Vaquita Porpoise Toward Extinction\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\tBy Teresa Tomassoni<\/p>\n \t<\/a><\/p>\n Some of the team focused on listening for the animals using special acoustic devices that detect and record underwater sound. Like many cetaceans, vaquitas use echolocation to navigate, communicate and hunt. By emitting high-frequency clicks and listening for the returning echoes, they are able to get a sense of their environment and locate prey, including small fish, crabs and shrimp, even in murky shallows.\u00a0<\/p>\n By noting where in the refuge these sounds were detected, the researchers were able to focus their visual search. This process, Taylor said, allowed them \u201cto be in the right place and not have to just sort of search a big blank ocean.\u201d As a result, she said, despite not having optimal conditions, \u201cWe had quite a number of sightings.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Most of the survey activities took place inside the Zero Tolerance Area (ZTA), a 100-square-mile, octagon-shaped zone within the larger vaquita refuge off San Felipe. The area, established in 2020, was meant to serve as a strict no-fishing zone, protecting the small patch of sea where research has shown most vaquitas still remain. But, for several years, rampant gillnet fishing continued inside its boundaries.\u201cThere was so much gillnet fishing that it was really hard for us to operate our surveys, because we had to navigate around all the gillnets, and we could see the Vaquitas right in there with gill nets,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n That changed in 2022, when the Mexican Navy installed hundreds of concrete blocks fitted with metal hooks designed to snag and deter gillnets around the perimeter of the ZTA. Since then, officials have reported more than a 90 percent drop in illegal net use within the zone. \u201cAll of a sudden you go from something that\u2019s a Zero Tolerance Area on paper to a real sanctuary for Vaquitas,\u201d Taylor said.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, based on the most recent visual sightings and acoustic detections of vaquitas, Taylor said it\u2019s clear that some of the animals are moving just outside the Zero Tolerance Area. These findings suggest protections like the cement blocks and hooks may need to extend beyond its current boundaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to looking for the animals, the team also tried to identify each of the individuals they saw. That way they could determine if they had been seen in previous years, or if they were new ones that had yet to be identified. It was a way to track their survival over time.\u00a0<\/p>\n To do this, the team tried to photograph each of the animals with long telephoto lenses or drones. They could later analyze the photos and distinguish individuals by their distinctive fin shapes and scars or notches etched into them. \u201cWe thought that we could use photo identification to estimate the numbers of vaquitas and be able to really follow individual fates, which I think is really not only important for science and conservation, but also, I think it makes them much more understandable to the public and to the local community,\u201d Taylor said. One way to make them even more relatable, she said, was to give them names.\u00a0<\/p>\n Signs of Hope<\/p>\n Towards the end of the month on a rare clear day, the team experienced one of their most memorable encounters.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a mother and calf that were close enough to see with the naked eye, which doesn\u2019t happen with vaquitas very often,\u201d Taylor said. Unlike most of their previous sightings, which typically lasted less than a minute, this pair lingered near the surface long enough for researchers to capture clear drone footage of them swimming together. The adult female was one they recognized by her distinct bent dorsal fin. \u201cWe named her Frida after Frida Kahlo, because Frida was also wounded, but had a very important life as a leader of Mexican culture,\u201d Taylor said.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was the third year in a row they had spotted Frida, and the second time she was with a calf, which the group estimated was about a year old\u2014a hopeful sign, Taylor said, being that many young die in the first year or two of their lives. From the drone footage, she added, it looks like Frida may even be pregnant again.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is so encouraging that we have these females that are reproducing as fast as they can and their young are surviving,\u201d Taylor said during a press conference about the survey results in late October. \u201cI think their recovery could be on the optimistic end, but still, right now it\u2019s the time to work on the human dimension of the problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This story is funded by readers like you.<\/p>\n Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.<\/p>\n Donate Now<\/a> <\/p>\n By the end of the expedition, the team estimated they had seen between seven and ten individual vaquitas, including one or two calves. Because it\u2019s not always possible to distinguish between individuals, the scientists report a range of estimated sightings rather than an exact count.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to note, Rojas-Bracho said, that these numbers do not reflect the total population. They should be interpreted as a \u201cminimum number of surviving vaquitas.\u201d Though, he added, it\u2019s likely there aren\u2019t many more. Last year\u2019s survey recorded between six and eight individuals\u2014a reminder of how fragile the vaquita population remains.\u00a0<\/p>\n Vaquita Defense\u00a0<\/p>\n When Rojas-Bracho first began studying the species in the late 1990s, there were roughly 600 vaquitas. Since then, their numbers have fallen by more than 90 percent, in large part due to illegal fishing of totoaba, an endangered fish, endemic to the Gulf, that can grow bigger than the vaquita. The nets fishermen use to catch these fish are some of the largest and deadliest.<\/p>\n![\"Andrea](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-2200458216-330x220.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Barbara](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/250918_VD_SH_observers-02_VG-9-1.jpg\"\/)
Barbara Taylor, a biologist from Montana, has been monitoring whales, dolphins and porpoises for more than 30 years. In September, she helped lead the annual survey of the critically endangered vaquita porpoise in the Upper Gulf of California. Credit: Victor G\u00f3mez<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/lookin_MG_2272-1024x682.jpg\"\/)
The vaquita porpoise is the most endangered marine mammal in the world. It\u2019s barely 5-feet-long and has dark rings around its eyes and mouth. Most of its population has been wiped out due to being entangled in illegal gillnets. Credit: Thomas A. Jefferson\/VIVA Vaquita<\/p>\n![\"Expert](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/250914_Survey_PMS_Observers_1419781-1.jpg\"\/)
Expert marine mammal researchers used high-powered binoculars called \u201cbig eyes\u201d to search for the vaquita porpoises, which are typically hard to see due to their small size and shy nature. Credit: Paula Mosa<\/p>\n
![\"Earlier](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/250914_VD_SH_Survey-crew_group-photo_VG-1.jpg\"\/)
Earlier this year, a team of expert marine mammal researchers and crew from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society conducted a month-long survey in the Upper Gulf of California to look for the critically endangered vaquita porpoise. Credit: Victor G\u00f3mez<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Teresa-Tomassoni-300x300.jpg\"\/)
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