Capturing Public Support for an Endangered Species Through Photography
Friday, April 22, 2016 - 13:40
in Biology & Nature
Just four hours south of the UC San Diego campus lives the most endangered marine mammal in the world: the vaquita porpoise. Despite the Mexican government's ban on gillnet fishing in the northern Gulf of California, fishermen on the hunt for totoaba fish and shrimp continue to use the nets illegally, leading to the incidental capture of vaquita, which become tangled in the nets and drown. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the estimated 100 individuals remaining are at risk of becoming extinct by 2018 if incidental capture is not prevented immediately.