First published April 21, 2019.
The vaquita is a small porpoise found only in the northern Gulf of California, Mexico, and it is the most endangered marine mammal on Earth. In early 2019, biologists feared it could be gone within months, with roughly 22 animals thought to remain. That forecast did not come true: the species is still hanging on, but only just. A May 2024 survey estimated six to eight vaquitas, and a 2025 count reported seven to ten individuals, along with new calves.
Why is a porpoise that was only scientifically named in 1958 already on the edge of extinction? The short answer is fishing nets, and in particular nets set illegally for a large fish whose swim bladder sells for huge sums in East Asia. The longer answer involves poverty, organised crime, weak enforcement and a species that breeds slowly and lives nowhere else.
What is a vaquita?
The name means "little cow" in Spanish. Vaquitas are the smallest living cetaceans, the group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Adults are about four to five feet long; females grow slightly longer than males. NOAA Fisheries describes them as dark grey on the back and pale underneath, with black rings around the eyes and black patches on the lips that make them look as if they are wearing eyeliner and a faint smile. That gentle face is why the animal is sometimes nicknamed the "panda of the sea."
The species has the smallest range of any marine mammal: a patch of shallow, murky water in the upper Gulf, mostly east of the town of San Felipe in Baja California, covering roughly 1,500 square miles. Vaquitas eat small fish, squid and crustaceans and are shy of boats, so they are rarely seen. Scientists first described the species in 1958 from skulls found on a beach, and its living appearance was not documented in detail until the 1980s.
Biology works against them. Females mature at three to six years, carry a single calf for about ten to eleven months and are thought to give birth only every other year. A population that small cannot bounce back quickly, even when conditions improve.
How many vaquitas are left?
Counts have fallen steeply over three decades. NOAA puts the population at about 600 in 1997, around 200 in 2008 and roughly 60 in 2015. Acoustic monitoring then suggested about 30 in 2016, and by 2018 the estimate dropped below 19. The figure of around 22 cited in early 2019, which this article first reported, came from that period of fast decline, when many researchers expected the species to vanish within the year.
It did not. Joint visual and acoustic surveys funded by the Mexican government and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society kept finding a handful of animals. According to the Animal Welfare Institute, the 2023 survey estimated eight to thirteen vaquitas with one or two calves. The May 2024 survey covered a larger area but estimated only six to eight and saw no calves, although researchers noted that some animals may simply have been outside the area searched. The 2025 survey reported seven to ten individuals and new calves, a small but real sign that the survivors are healthy enough to breed.
These numbers matter for a second reason. Genetic research has reportedly suggested that the species was always naturally small, so inbreeding alone may not doom it. The decisive factor is whether animals keep drowning in nets.
The totoaba trade behind the decline
The vaquita shares its waters with the totoaba, the largest member of the drum family, which can reach two metres and well over 100 kilograms. Totoaba were fished commercially from the 1920s, with catches peaking around 2,000 tonnes in 1943. By 1975 the catch had collapsed to about 50 tonnes, and Mexico banned the fishery. In 1976 the fish was added to Appendix I of CITES, which bans international commercial trade.
The ban did not end demand. The totoaba's dried swim bladder, known as maw, is prized in Chinese cuisine and traditional medicine as a status gift and supposed health tonic. Prices have been reported in the tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram; Wikipedia's account cites 200 bladders sold for 3.6 million dollars at 2013 prices. Because vaquitas and totoabas are similar in size, the large-mesh gillnets set for the fish trap and drown the porpoises as bycatch.
Shrimp gillnets add to the toll. NOAA lists entanglement in gillnets as the single main threat, with illegal totoaba fishing the largest driver of the recent crash.
China prosecutes 11 for smuggling $119 million worth of Mexico's critically endangered totoaba fish.
— AFP news agency (@AFP) March 7, 2019
The illegal fishing for totoaba in the Gulf of California is also killing off the world's smallest porpoise, the near-extinct vaquita marinahttps://t.co/QxMck5qLE7 pic.twitter.com/QEppjUMitC
The tweet above, from AFP in March 2019, reported that Chinese courts were prosecuting eleven people accused of smuggling totoaba maw worth around 119 million dollars. Cases like this show the trade runs on international smuggling networks, not just on local boats.
Fishers caught in the middle
The towns around the upper Gulf, such as San Felipe and Santa Clara, depend heavily on the sea. When legal fishing is restricted, families lose income, and a single night's totoaba catch can pay more than months of legal work. Reporting from 2019 described buyers lending money for expensive nets and boats, then buying the catch at low prices and selling it on at huge profit.
Local fishing leader Sunshine Rodríguez summed up the resentment in an interview with NBC: "The Chinese are making the profit, that I can tell you." Investigators from groups such as the Elephant Action League made a similar point from the opposite side, arguing that arresting poor fishers does little unless the traders and smugglers higher up are also targeted. Their undercover work was reported to have contributed to arrests of traffickers in China.
Enforcement on the water has at times been tense. Mexican navy and police patrols have clashed with fishers, and conservation boats have been confronted. The lesson many researchers draw is that saving the vaquita depends as much on giving coastal communities a decent legal living as on patrols.
What has been done to protect them
Protection has a long paper trail. The United States listed the vaquita as endangered in 1985, and it is classed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN. Key steps in Mexico have included:
- 2015: a two-year emergency ban on most gillnets in the vaquita's range, with compensation for fishers.
- 2017: a permanent gillnet ban across the range, with exceptions for some legal fisheries. The same year, the VaquitaCPR project tried to catch vaquitas and hold them in a sea pen; one captured female died shortly afterwards and the effort was halted.
- 2019: UNESCO placed the Gulf's islands and protected areas on its list of World Heritage in Danger, partly because of the vaquita.
- 2020: a "zero tolerance area" around the animals' core habitat where no fishing is allowed. The US also restricted seafood imports from the vaquita's range.
- 2022 onward: the Mexican navy sank concrete blocks fitted with hooks inside the zone to snag and destroy gillnets, and in 2024 a new cooperation agreement with Sea Shepherd expanded patrols.
Results have been mixed. The zero tolerance area has seen fewer nets, but the Animal Welfare Institute notes that illegal fishing has remained widespread in the surrounding waters.
Common myths about the vaquita
"The vaquita went extinct in 2019." It did not. The 2019 prediction was a warning based on the fast decline at the time, and later surveys confirmed survivors.
"Captive breeding can save it." Experts tried capture in 2017 and stopped after a death. Vaquitas appear to react badly to handling, so protecting the wild animals in their habitat remains the only realistic plan.
"It is too late, so protection is pointless." Calves are still being born. Scientists have argued that if net deaths stop, the population could slowly recover, because the remaining animals appear healthy.
"This is just a local Mexican problem." The demand that drives the totoaba trade is largely overseas, and the smuggling routes cross the United States and Hong Kong. Shoppers can help by choosing seafood from fisheries that do not use gillnets in vaquita habitat and by supporting groups that work with fishing communities on alternative gear.
What the vaquita's story teaches
The vaquita shows how quickly a species can slide when a lucrative black market overlaps with its home. It also shows that extinction is not automatic: a forecast made in 2019 has been proved wrong year after year because a few determined people, agencies and fishers kept the last animals alive. Whether the porpoise survives the next decade depends on keeping gillnets out of a small stretch of sea and on tackling the trade that puts them there.
The featured image is credited to Project Vaquita Marina.
Sources: NOAA Fisheries: Vaquita species account; Animal Welfare Institute, June 2024: New survey, no more than eight vaquita remain; Wikipedia: Vaquita; Wikipedia: Totoaba; AFP news agency on X, March 2019; featured image: Project Vaquita Marina.
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