The first vaquita brought into captivity. Photo courtesy of VaquitaCPR.
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 best estimate of the population size at that time. It was known from the beginning however that the chances of successfully capturing all 15 vaquitas was quite low.
The first vaquita captured as a part of this program was a juvenile female, and the animal was extremely stressed out. I witnessed this first hand, as I was the first member of our film crew to arrive on the scene as the vaquita was removed from the special net that was used for capture (a net designed to float, so that the vaquita could swim to the surface for air once entangled). I sat in the small boat with the researchers, camera rolling the entire time, as they brought the vaquita into shore and transferred it to a pool inside the onshore facility.
Members of the vaquita capture team, accompanied by Wild Lens filmmaker Matt Podolsky.
The marine mammal experts and veterinarians had difficultly calming the animal down, and soon decided to bring the vaquita to the floating sea pen to see if this different captive environment would help. When the animal continued to exhibit signs of extreme stress, the decision was made to bring her back out to the location where she was trapped and release her. While it was discouraging to see this individual’s inability to adapt to a captive environment, experts remained hopeful that an adult vaquita would fare better.
Weeks went by without another successful capture, and members of the capture team began to worry that they might not catch another animal. Then, with less than a week left before the effort was scheduled to conclude, an adult female vaquita was captured.
Recently captured vaquita swimming inside the floating sea pen.
This second animal initially appeared to be adapting much more readily to captivity. It was introduced to the floating sea pen, and appeared to be learning how to navigate it’s new surroundings, when suddenly things took a dramatic turn for the worse. The vaquita’s stress level shot through the roof and an emergency release was attempted. Unfortunately, it was too late – the vaquita circled back towards the sea pen, then went limp in the water. Scientists dove in after her and made one final attempt to resuscitate the animal before declaring her dead.
This was everyone’s worst nightmare – the death of a captured vaquita. The capture effort was shut down soon after the death, based on the assumption that this species simply can’t handle life in captivity. Is this an accurate assumption however? Since only two vaquitas were successfully captured, I would argue that we don’t have a large enough sample size to confidently answer this question. What I do know is that the experts in charge of the capture effort had to make an extremely difficult decision – one that had no good outcomes.