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Vaquita

Phocoena sinus · impossible

The vaquita is the smallest porpoise and the most endangered marine mammal in the world. It lives in one place only: the shallow, turbid northern end of the Gulf of California, an area small enough to drive around in a day. It was not described by science until 1958, and by the time it was well studied it was already in trouble.

The animal itself is unobtrusive — around a metre and a half, with dark rings around the eyes and mouth that give it a distinctive face, surfacing briefly and rarely approaching boats. Almost nothing about the vaquita's decline is its own doing.

The cause is gillnets, and specifically the illegal fishery for a large fish called the totoaba, whose swim bladder is trafficked to markets where it commands extraordinary prices. Vaquitas drown in nets set for that fish. Every other threat is secondary.

Surveys have tracked the population down through the hundreds, then the tens, and most recently to a number small enough to count individually. Encouragingly, the remaining animals appear healthy and are still calving, and researchers have found no evidence that inbreeding is limiting them — which means the species could recover if the nets were genuinely removed.

Where it lives

Worml lists the vaquita as native to Mexico. Its habitat is shallow turbid water at the head of one gulf.

Ranges here are reduced to whole countries for playability and exclude introduced populations — see about the data for what that simplification leaves out.

In the game

Vaquita is rated impossible. To solve the round you need to name the single country it lives in. How scoring works →

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