Hayle Clark
25 September 2014
Chapter 6 # 2
Many animals and plants over the years are becoming more endangered or threatened. Due to this happening the population of some on these animals are becoming lower and lower. For someone of these animals and plants there population is still decreasing today which means in the future they might not be around anymore. Some of the animals and plants we have today might not be around for the future generations like our kids or grandkids. This is a main concern for a great number of animals and plants. Humans should stop killing away animals and plants for their personal needs because it just lowers their population making them become endangered.
In 1958 the vaquita was discovered native to Mexico’s Gulf of California. The vaquita is one of the world’s most rare marine mammal. These animals can be found swimming close to shore in the gulf’s shallow waters but if it see a boat it tries to swim away as quickly as it possibly can. This animal is critically endangered that it is going to be extinct in the near future. The main reason for their extinction that because they are in the ocean they are being caught in gillnets and drowning from illegal fisherman in areas that are protected. Over time these animals have lost half of their population due to this major problem with the fisherman. As of 2014 there are said to be fewer than 100 vaquita left on earth.
As stated on the world wildlife website they believe that by the year 2018 if the fisherman are not gone immediately than they will be extinct and gone forever. Even though there is a banned for fisherman to be fishing with these types of nets in these areas they are still illegally fishing there which is the cause of decline in this animal. The world wildlife in the past have been studying these animals for protective measures and then allowing the Mexican government to know about it. They are trying to come up with a plan to develop a long term solution to conserve the species. In September 2014 the Mexican government is strongly enforcing there banned on gillnets being used by fisherman. These are the things that the world wildlife group believe will help keep the vaquita from going extinct.
The website vaquita Tv says that The Mexican government is also going to monitor the population of the vaquita over time to see if there is any change. The Mexican government is going to use acoustic monitoring to best detect the size of their population because you cannot detect them visually due to the low numbers in population. The US and Mexican scientist are working together with Great Britain and Japan to conduct a research cruise in the fall. They are using this cruise to develop, test, and calibrate their acoustic monitoring system to cover a big part of the vaquita range. For this they are going to detect the trends of the quantity of the species.
Thanks to the Mexican government trying to banned the use of the gillnets for fisherman use in the gulf we might see a growing increase in the vaquita population. People who help the keep the fisherman out of the Mexican gulf near California will be helping the vaquita from going extinct. Let’s help the vaquita and keep them around so you, your kids, you grandkids, and everyone will be able to see this wonderful creature.
http://vaquita.tv/about-vaquita/vaquita-life-history-facts/