Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Vaquita Research”
Click Here to Watch Souls of the Vermilion Sea on Amazon Prime! Wild Lens was born out of a strong desire to halt species declines and prevent wildlife extinctions. Our first film focused on the endangered California condor, a species that very narrowly escaped extinction in the 1980s. While working on that film, I interviewed many of the biologists who …
For the past six weeks here on our blog we’ve been exploring a variety of ongoing efforts undertaken to prevent the extinction of the vaquita. Here we present all of this same information in podcast form, as an episode of our new audio series, The Vaquita Chronicles.
Something that we have noticed here at Wild Lens on many of the conservation projects that we’ve been involved with is a lack of cohesiveness and collaboration amongst different groups working on the same issue. While there have certainly been some really fantastic and beneficial collaborative efforts implemented to help address the vaquita issue, there have also been some troubling …
The vaquita capture effort was the most high profile attempt to prevent the vaquita’s extinction. Over 60 marine mammal experts were involved in the approximately two month long program designed to bring the vaquita into a captive environment. The stated goal of this program was the capture as many vaquita as possible – up to 15 animals, which was the …
Two organizations, Elephant Action League (EAL) and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), have conducted comprehensive undercover investigations into the illegal trade in totoaba swim bladders. These investigations provide crucial information to law enforcement agencies, theoretically allowing these agencies to take action to shut down these illegal supply chains. Remember – it is this illegal supply chain for totoaba swim …
At its heart, the vaquita issue is an economic issue. Most fisherman continue to use gillnets because they feel like they have no other means to earn a living. The importance of providing alternative livelihoods has been recognized for a long time – in 2008 the Mexican government offered buyouts to local fisherman, and also began testing alternative vaquita-friendly fishing …
Although the situation faced by the vaquita is quite dire, there are lots of organizations and individuals that are committed to doing all they can to prevent the vaquita’s extinction. In this article, we will summarize the scientific research and monitoring work that has been conducted on the vaquita population. Scientific Research and the Remote Acoustic Monitoring Program Without scientific …
Listen to this episode in iTunes If you’re wondering what a vaquita is, you should first check out our previous blog article, which answers this question in great detail. I’ll tell you here, that the vaquita is species of porpoise (a marine mammal related to whales and dolphins) found only in the Northern Gulf of California in Mexico – …
What is a Vaquita? This was the question that I asked of my friend and collaborator Sean Bogle when he called me in the summer of 2014 to tell me about an opportunity to work with the group Save the Whales on an advocacy and outreach campaign focused on this animal. The vaquita was completely unknown to me at the …