Lending a fin: How US Navy dolphins are helping save endangered vaquitas
There might be less than three dozen vaquitas in existence. US Navy-trained dolphins could help find them in order to help protect their endangered population.
There might be less than three dozen vaquitas in existence. US Navy-trained dolphins could help find them in order to help protect their endangered population.
Mexico is trying to save the last of its vaquita porpoises, with the help of international scientists. Now, the US Navy is offering flippers of its own to the effort.
Dolphins trained by the Navy鈥檚 Marine Mammal Program for tasks such as sniffing out underwater mines and enemy divers are going to be deployed in the Gulf of California, the only body of water where vaquitas live, in order to locate the last few dozen members of the elusive species 鈥� and help capture them.
After locating the rare porpoises, Jim Fallin of the US Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific told the Associated Press, the dolphins could point the way "by surfacing and returning to the boat from which they were launched."
Their participation, he added, is still in the planning stage, as is the work of the international group they鈥檙e joining. But the two primary goals of the mission, expected to start sometime this spring, according to Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, chairman of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita, are clear: Figure out how feasible it is to locate and catch the vaquitas, and whether the porpoises can be temporarily housed in the Sea of Cortez, a protected section of the Gulf where they might be able to safely breed.
"At the current rate of loss, the vaquita will likely decline to extinction by 2022 unless the current gill-net ban is maintained and effectively enforced," Mr. Rojas-Bracho wrote, according to the AP.
As 海角大神 previously聽reported in May, the vaquita finds itself at the edge of extinction because of Chinese appetites for the totoaba fish. Gill nets used by poachers to trap the totoaba, whose swim bladder is believed to have medicinal value, often trap vaquitas, too.
The catch-and-enclose proposal is a potentially risky one. The vaquita has never been held in captivity, and some experts, including Mexico director of the World Wildlife Fund Omar Vidal, say captivity could end up killing the last remaining members of the species.聽
"We must strive to save this porpoise where it belongs: in a healthy Upper Gulf of California," he told the AP.
Proponents of the proposal acknowledge the risk, saying the vaquitas鈥� reaction to the capture should be closely monitored. Barbara Taylor, a conservation biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the operation should be done "in a very careful, staged manner."
"We can't afford to be slow about this," she said. "We have to give this our mightiest effort as quickly as possible."
This report contains material from the Associated Press.