Vaquita porpoise. (Photo: WWF)

Court orders ban on seafood imports from Mexico to save vaquita porpoise

UNITED STATES
Friday, July 27, 2018, 03:00 (GMT + 9)

The US Court of International Trade ordered the Trump administration to ban seafood imports from Mexico caught with gillnets that kill the critically endangered vaquita porpoise, responding to a lawsuit filed by conservation groups.

The ruling follows a lawsuit filed in March by three conservation organisations: Natural Resources Defense Council, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Court ruling affirms Congress’ mandate under the US Marine Mammal Protection Act that the United States protect not just domestic marine mammals, but foreign whales, dolphins, and porpoises as well.

The import ban covers all fish and fish products from Mexican commercial fisheries that use gillnets within the vaquita’s range in the Upper Gulf of California, including shrimp, corvina (drum fish), sierra (Spanish mackerel) and chano (bigeye croaker) from the area.

“With vaquitas on the brink of extinction, these economic sanctions are painful but necessary to push Mexican officials to finally protect these little porpoises,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“For 20 years, the Mexican government has promised to save the vaquita but failed to take meaningful action. That has to change or we’ll lose these animals forever,” the director claimed.

In its decision, the Court found that ”the number of permissible vaquita deaths under the [Marine Mammal Protection Act] is being exceeded, that an embargo is legally required, and that the species is at risk of extinction.”

In this regard, it explained that the risk of the vaquita’s extinction from continued gillnet fishing in the Gulf outweighed the costs of an embargo. The court cited experts’ statements that “extinction is . . . inevitable unless gillnets are completely removed from vaquita habitat,” and that the vaquita’s plight is so desperate that “even one more bycatch death . . . threatens the very existence of the species.”

“A ban on gillnet-caught seafood from Mexico’s Gulf of California is the life line the vaquita desperately needs,” said Giulia Good Stefani, staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who argued the case before the Court.

“Collectively, our organizations have spent over a decade working to save the vaquita—and never has extinction felt so close—but now, the world’s smallest and most endangered porpoise has what may be its very last chance,” she stated.

For her part, Kate O’Connell, marine animal consultant at the Animal Welfare Institute, stressed that the Mexican government must now protect the vaquita from gillnets before it is too late and this species disappears forever.

It is estimated that in 2017 alone more than 1,400 tonnes of the now-banned gillnet-caught fish and shrimp, valued at roughly USD 16 million, crossed the border to be consumed in the United States.

 
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