Courtesy of SeafoodNews.com:
Mexico acknowledged Saturday that it faces sanctions from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) for not doing enough to protect the vaquita, the world’s most endangered marine mammal.
The sanctions have not yet been announced, but could make it difficult for the country to export some regulated animal and plant products such as crocodile or snake skins, orchids and cacti. Commercial seafood species such as shrimp would not be affected, but the ruling sets a precedent and some groups are lobbying for bans on seafood imports.
“While no one likes sanctions that create economic pain, all other efforts to push Mexico to save the vaquita have failed,” said Sarah Uhlemann, director of international programs at the Center for Biological Biodiversity. “We hope these strong measures will make the Mexican government wake up.”
Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that CITES “does not consider adequate” the Mexican plan to protect this porpoise, and noted that the full resolution “will be officially released next week.”
The Secretariat considered that the resolution represents “an inequitable treatment towards our country by not taking into account the exhaustive effort and the multiple actions that have been carried out”.
According to several studies, there could be only eight vaquitas left in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortés), the only place on the planet where they live. They tend to get entangled in so-called fishing gill nets, causing them to drown.
Mexico recently submitted a revised protection plan to CITES, after that convention rejected a previous version. The Latin American country’s plan states that one of its main priorities is to establish alternative fishing techniques that do not include these nets. In reality, however, government measures to protect the porpoise have been haphazard at best, and often face violent opposition from local fishermen.
The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has largely refused to spend money to compensate fishermen to stay out of the vaquita refuge and stop using gillnets. The nets are set illegally to catch totoaba, a fish whose swim bladders are considered a delicacy in China and are worth thousands of dollars a pound (0.45 kilograms).
The government has also sunk concrete blocks with hooks to drag the illegal nets with them in the last area of the Gulf of California where vaquita have been sighted.
The activist group Sea Shepherd, which has joined the Mexican Navy in patrols to discourage fishermen and help destroy the gillnets, says the measures have successfully reduced gillnet fishing. But with so few vaquita still alive, that may not be enough.
In addition, some experts believe that the Mexican government has not spent enough money to train and compensate fishermen for using alternative fishing techniques, such as nets or lines that do not trap vaquita.
The Mexican government banned the use of gillnets in the area in 2017, with the understanding that it would provide support payments and training for the use of less dangerous fishing methods.
CITES, signed by 184 countries, regulates the trade and defense of protected species.