In the spring of 2017 fellow Wild Lens filmmaker Sean Bogle and myself were driving from my home in Boise, Idaho towards the Mexican border. We had just completed work on our 30-minute documentary film about the vaquita – the world’s most endangered marine mammal – and we were heading towards the epicenter of the vaquita issue – San Felipe, Mexico.
Our film, Souls of the Vermilion Sea, had been put together with a very specific goal in mind – to prevent the extinction of the vaquita, a small species of porpoise found only in the Northern Gulf of California. Now that the film was complete, we were taking it to the area where we stood the greatest chance to have a positive impact – the communities of the Northern Gulf of California. We had a series of community screenings planned for the coming weeks, and we were nervous, but hopeful about the response we would get to our recently completed documentary.
Our nervousness stemmed from the numerous warnings that we had received in the weeks leading up to our screenings. The vaquita is dying as bycatch in the nets set for a fish called the totoaba, another endangered species whose swim bladder is worth large sums of money in China. The black market that has sprouted up to transport these totoaba swim bladders is run by Mexico’s drug cartels. A riot had broken out a few weeks previous in one of these towns in the Northern Gulf, and several government vehicles had been burned. Tensions were extremely high, and many of our partners recommended that we cancel the screenings.
Sean and I had worked too hard on this film and on organizing these community screening events to back down now however. We largely ignored the warnings – and continued with our plans to screen our film in San Felipe.
The first screening was open to anyone and everyone in the community – we held it at a local community center and it was fairly well attended. We hosted a discussion session after the film which resulted in some fantastic dialogue. But had we reached any of the illegal fisherman who we were targeting? Not likely.
Next we had the opportunity to take the film into the schools of San Felipe. We presented the film at four different middle and high schools in this small town, reaching hundreds of kids. This was our greatest opportunity to have an impact on the outcome of the vaquita issue – our hope was that we could reach a critical mass of students, who would then go out into the community and begin to shift the dialogue on this topic.
In addition to presenting the film in person, Sean and I also handed out dozens of DVD copies of our film, and the teachers received this educational resource with enormous gratitude. On subsequent visits to San Felipe we were told that our film has been screened many more times in schools throughout the town, making us confident that we reached that critical mass of students; students who now have the power to shift the cultural attitudes of this community as they grow older.
Our efforts to improve the situation for the vaquita, and the communities of the Northern Gulf, did not end with these screenings in the spring of 2017 however. There was another key target group that we wanted to reach – the buyers of totoaba swim bladders in China, and Chinese officials responsible for enforcing wildlife trafficking regulations. It is the illegal market for the swim bladder of the totoaba that is driving the extinction of the vaquita (through bycatch in the nets set for totoaba), so if we could slow the demand for this product, that could have a significant impact in Mexico. So we began reaching out to our contacts in Hong Kong to organize a series of screenings catered to Chinese government officials.
Sean had established a relationship with a key figure – the director of the Mexican consulate in Hong Kong. This connection led to many others, and eventually a plan was established to host a high profile screening of the film in Hong Kong, presented in collaboration between the US and Mexican consulate offices. This event was attended by numerous key figures in the Chinese government responsible for enforcing wildlife trafficking regulations, and it also introduced our film to many conservation and advocacy groups in the region. Following this presentation, Souls of the Vermilion Sea screened numerous times at a variety of venues across Hong Kong and Southern China.
Additionally, we began collaborating with the group Wild Aid at this time, contributing a significant amount of footage for an hour long documentary being produced for Chinese television. The potential of this Wild Aid film to have an impact on the vaquita was huge – it was slated to be broadcast on a network that reached hundreds of millions of people. Sadly, the Wild Aid film was never broadcast due to a misunderstanding with the broadcast network – something that frustrates and angers us to this day.
By the fall of 2017, although we continued to host screenings of Souls of the Vermilion Sea, we were already engrossed in the next stage of our vaquita campaign – a new feature length film. We had established a collaborative relationship with several other high profile production companies interested in the vaquita’s story, and took this as an opportunity to make a film that would have a significantly wider reach than our short documentary. While Souls had a very specific target audience, designed to maximize the impact – this new film, called Sea of Shadows will seek to reach millions of people globally, making the vaquita a household name.
We have not stopped working on community based outreach and education despite our involvement in this new film however. We continue to screen Souls of the Vermilion Sea all around the globe, and we continue to collaborate with organizations working on the front lines of the vaquita issue. In fact – this blog article that you’re reading right now is one small part of our current effort to educate people about the plight of the vaquita, and the global implications of this extinction crisis.