1/4 🧵Voluminous #vaquita & #totoaba docs now being posted to @CITES #SC78. We'll start our highlight series with the 100 page scientific study by our esteemed colleague Valeria Towns, who has been working in Mexico's Upper Gulf of California since 2019.
cites.org/sites/default/files/documents/E-SC78-33-12-01-A7.pdf
2/4 Bureaucratic wheels turn sloowly...study first called for by Mexico (focused on solving totoaba illegal trade) in 2016 (when other Party govts added vaquita to the study & issue). Funding for the study only secured in 2022 (👍to Switzerland) & its format approved in 2023.
3/4 Vaquita linked to the CITES issue of controlling illegal international totoaba trade because giant gillnets typically used to poach totoaba are a major bycatch risk. But even if totoaba gillnetting could be eliminated vaquitas still endangered by gillnets for other seafood.
4/4 350,000-750,000 totoaba in Gulf of CA compared to <10 vaquita in Vaquita Refuge. To get gillnets out, totoaba fishery should be part of work to transition communities to non-gillnet gear, & intl swim bladder trafficking addressed by transnational organized crime prosecution.