In the early days of the Vaquita campaign, before Sea Shepherd’s ships carried the sonar they rely on today, grappling hooks were the primary tool for finding illegal and ghost fishing nets. Crews towed hooks across the sea, blind, hauling up gillnets by feel in a race to clear them before they could drown the Vaquita porpoise, the most endangered marine mammal on Earth.
Ghost Gear Recovery · San Felipe · 4 June 2026
On June 4, 2026, those same grappling hooks went back in the water off San Felipe, and the contrast says everything about how far this fight has come. Days earlier, more than half the Seahorse crew had watched a pair of Vaquita surface near the ship, a rare, direct reminder of exactly what this work is for.
Working alongside the Mexican Navy (SEMAR), federal environmental protection agencies PROFEPA, CONAPESCA, and CONANP, the local organization Pesca ABC, and local fishermen, the crew used the hooks not for emergency net recovery but for a deliberate sweep of the seabed for ghost gear. What came up was a heavy, tangled ball of metal cable, the kind of discarded gear that has accumulated in these waters for decades and keeps trapping marine life long after it was abandoned. With the Seahorse as a platform, it was lifted out and gone.
That shift, from blind emergency response to sustained, coordinated operations, is the whole story. Sea Shepherd now maintains a permanent presence in the Upper Gulf of California: ships on station year-round, and assets operated by the Mexican Navy to extend enforcement reach. That infrastructure is what turns a one-time effort into lasting protection, and what invites the people who live here to take part in defending their own waters.
The next morning, that participation was on full display. Roughly 130 people, from SEMAR, PROFEPA, CONAPESCA, SEDENA, Pesca ABC, CONANP, ZOFEMAT, local volunteers, and the Seahorse crew, removed 1,438 kilograms of waste from the San Felipe shoreline in a single day.
Beach Cleanup · San Felipe · 5 June 2026
The Vaquita porpoise will not be saved by a single dramatic rescue. It will be saved by the patient, year-round work of clearing these waters, and by the people who live here standing alongside the Navy, the agencies, and Sea Shepherd. Together they defend the place they call home, for the Vaquita and the countless other species that share these waters.
