Mexico tries to avoid sanctions for the vaquita situation

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is trying to avoid possible trade sanctions in the coming days for failing to prevent the impending extinction of the vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise and most endangered marine mammal.

Studies estimate that only about eight vaquitas may remain in the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of ​​Cortez, the only place where they exist and where they often become entangled in illegal gillnets and drown.

The Mexican government this week submitted a protection plan to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which had rejected a previous version. In the plan, the government mentions that one of its main priorities is to establish alternative fishing techniques to gillnet fishing.

In reality, government efforts to protect the vaquita have been spotty.

The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has largely refused to spend money to compensate fishermen who stay outside the vaquita refuge and to stop using gillnets. These nets are set up illegally to catch totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is a delicacy in China and fetches thousands of dollars a pound.

Activist group Sea Shepherd, which has joined the Mexican Navy in surveillance operations to arrest fishermen and help destroy gillnets, said these efforts have been successful in reducing the nets.

However, the Mexican government has not spent the money necessary to train and compensate fishermen who use alternative fishing techniques, such as nets or lines that do not catch vaquitas.

Alex Olivera, Mexico’s representative for the Centers for Biological Diversity, stressed that less plans and bureaucracy are needed, and more concrete actions, in vaquita porpoise habitat.

Olivera noted that CITES could recommend the application of trade sanctions if Mexico does not take reasonable measures.

For his part, Lorenzo Rojas, a marine biologist who led the international commission to save the vaquita, pointed out that no alternative fishing gear was offered. He added that fisheries authorities have been conspicuous by their absence, leaving the work of changing practices in the hands of civil society groups and fishers.

The Mexican government banned the use of gillnets in the region in 2017 on the understanding that it would provide aid payments and training to use less dangerous fishing methods.

For years, Sea Shepherd has sent ships to the Gulf of California to try to discourage illegal fishing and remove abandoned nets that continue to trap vaquitas.

Sea Shepherd said its joint efforts with the Mexican Navy – through which some 193 concrete blocks were sunk to the bottom of the gulf to snag illegal nets in the area intended for the vaquita – resulted in a 79% reduction in the amount. time that small boats spend fishing illegally in the protected area.

It went from 449 hours recorded between October 10 and December 5, 2021 to 164 hours over the same period of 2022.

But it’s still been a long time to fish in an area that is supposed to be totally prohibited.

“We need to do better,” said Pritam Singh, president of Sea Shepherd.

A fishing magazine, Notipesca, has reported that the Mexican government plans to fund a study that will examine long-collected vaquita teeth in hopes of showing that they lived in a wetland fed by the Colorado River that contained a mixture of salt and sugar water. .

Little fresh water has reached the Gulf of California since the United States began damming the river in the 1930s. One theory is that the United States – not Mexico – is responsible for the population decline of vaquita, while cutting off the flow

However, experts have pointed out that vaquitas found dead usually died after drowning in the nets, and not from malnutrition or other causes.

In 2020, the Mexican government unveiled an initiative to fight what it called “the cartel of the sea”, arresting a fisherman named Sunshine Rodríguez and accusing him of being the head of a criminal organization that trafficking in totoaba swim bladders.

But prosecutors failed to gather enough evidence and Rodríguez – who denied trafficking the fish’s swim bladders – was acquitted of the charges against him in February after spending 2 years and three months behind bars.

The time spent awaiting trial has had an effect: Rodríguez now says he will not get involved in negotiations between the fishermen and the government.