Saving Seafood

Mexico bans drift gillnets in Gulf of California in last-ditch effort to save vaquita

July 7, 2017 –Mexico’s government and American aid groups are taking drastic actions to preserve the vaquita, a critically endangered species of porpoise endemic to the northern Gulf of California.

Scientists estimate there are only 30 individual vaquita remaining, all residing in the upper area of what is also known as the Sea of Cortez. The primary threat facing the vaquita are driftnets used by fishermen fishing illegally for totoaba, another endangered species highly valued in China for its supposed medicinal properties.

On 30 June, in response to the vaquita’s dwindling numbers, the Mexican government instituted a permanent ban on drift gillnets in the Gulf of California (previous versions of the ban had been temporary measures). In addition, the government established more stringent monitoring measures and made it mandatory for fishermen to report all fishing gear they lose in the area, according to the Associated Press.

Mexico had been facing mounting pressure to take more comprehensive action to save the vaquita, including from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, as well as from international non-governmental organizations. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto posted several times on Twitter in June signaling he would enact more stringent measures to protect the vaquita, and shared a statement on the social media network after signing a memorandum of understanding committing to the gillnet ban.

“We have implemented a historic effort to avoid the extinction of a unique species, the vaquita marina, and to protect our ecosystem,” he wrote.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishing Rule Aims To Do For All Marine Mammals What It Did For The Dolphin

January 6, 2017 — The vaquita is a small porpoise found only in the northern Gulf of California, in Mexico. Today, the species is critically endangered, with less than 60 animals left in the wild, thanks to fishing nets to catch fish and shrimp for sale in Mexico and America. The animal is an accidental victim of the fishing industry, as are many other marine mammals.

But a new rule that takes effect this week seeks to protect marine mammals from becoming bycatch. The rule requires foreign fisheries exporting seafood to the U.S. to ensure that they don’t hurt or kill marine mammals.

If U.S. authorities determine that a certain foreign fishery is harming these mammals, the fishery will be required to take stock of the marine mammal populations in places where they fish, and find ways to reduce their bycatch. That could involve not fishing in areas with high numbers of marine mammals. Fisheries will also have to report cases when they do end up hurting mammals. This is what American fisheries are already required to do under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).

Up to 90 percent of seafood eaten in the U.S. is imported, most of it shrimp, freshwater fish, tuna, and salmon. The goal of the new rule is to ensure that seafood coming into the country didn’t harm or kill marine mammals.

But can this new rule protect the vaquita?

Zak Smith, a senior attorney with the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, thinks so. The vaquita is kind of a poster child for what happens when you don’t have this law in place,” he says.

To understand the potential impact of the rule, Smith says, we should consider the laws that saved dolphins from tuna fisheries. For decades, dolphins – which swim with schools of tuna – were accidentally (and sometimes deliberately) killed by tuna fisheries. According to NOAA, over six million dolphins have been killed since the beginning of tuna fishery. Enacted in 1972, the MMPA required tuna fisheries to take measures to stop harming dolphins. Then, in the 1980s, the act was amended to ban the import of tuna from foreign fisheries that harmed dolphins. In 1990, the U.S. passed another legislation – the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act – that spelled out requirements for “dolphin-safe” labeling on all tuna sold in America.

Smith says these laws have helped reduce dolphin deaths. But the new rule goes even further, he says, because it applies to all kinds of seafood and all marine mammals, not just tuna and dolphins.

As an American consumer, “I’ll know that anything I purchase in the U.S. met U.S. standards,” he says.

Read the full story at NPR

‘Aquatic Cocaine’ Is Killing The World’s Cutest Porpoise

September 26th, 2016 — Five feet long and weighing about 120 pounds, the vaquita is the world’s smallest porpoise.

It may also be the world’s cutest porpoise, what with its snub snout and panda-like dark spots around its eyes. But with fewer than 60 of its kind left in the world, the vaquita is without doubt the most endangered.

And according to a new report issued on the eve of a major international meeting on wildlife conservation, these diminutive sea mammals face almost certain extinction unless action is taken to stem the illegal trade in “aquatic cocaine.”

Not familiar with the term? Aquatic cocaine is slang for the dried swim bladder of a marine fish known as the totaoba, itself an endangered species.

Dried fish innards may sound icky to you. But in certain parts of China, aquatic cocaine (also known as fish maw) is a believed to have medicinal value. And its cost rivals that of illicit drugs ― hence the “aquatic cocaine” moniker.

One pound of the stuff could set you back $5,000, The New York Times reported earlier this year. The report says a really good fish maw specimen can command a whopping $50,000.

Why would stopping the fish maw trade help save the vaquita from extinction? Because as luck would have it, both vaquitas and totoaba live only in Mexico’s Gulf of California ― and the former are drowning in the illegal nets that poachers use to catch the latter so that the maws can be smuggled to China.

Read the full story at The Huffington Post

Chinese Taste For Fish Bladder Threatens Tiny Porpoise In Mexico

February 9, 2016 — The international trade in exotic animal parts includes rhino horn, seahorses, and bear gall bladders. But perhaps none is as strange as the swim bladder from a giant Mexican fish called the totoaba.

The totoaba can grow to the size of a football player. It lives only in the Gulf of California in Mexico, along with the world’s smallest and rarest mammal — a type of porpoise called the vaquita.
Now the new and lucrative bladder trade threatens to wipe out both animals.

“People in Asian cultures use the swim bladder in a soup called fish maw,” explains Erin Dean at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. It’s also reputed to have some medicinal value — it’s thought to boost fertility.

Dean says no one knows why the demand for it has skyrocketed recently. It could be that when a Chinese fish called a yellow croaker, which once supplied bladders, started dying out, people started turning to the Mexican totoaba to meet the demand for bladders.

Read the full story at New York Now