Net Loss: New Abundance Estimate Reveals That Mexico’s Vaquita Faces Imminent Extinction Due to Illegal Fishing

Barbara Taylor of the National Marine Fisheries Service Southwest Fisheries Science Center, who participated in the last effort to save the recently extinct Chinese River Dolphin, or Baiji, gives a detailed chronicle of her involvement in documenting the decline of earth’s most endangered marine mammal, the Vaquita, found only in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico. Their primary threat is death in gillnets, which until very recently supplied shrimp to the U.S. market. The catastrophic 80% decline since 2011 results from illegal sales of endangered totoaba swim bladders to China. Series: "Jeffrey B. Graham Perspectives on Ocean Science Lecture Series" [Science] [Show ID: 30921]