Crew members on board the Farley Mowat have marked the end of a scientific cetacean spotting expedition led by Mexico’s CONANP, and the start of Operation Milagro VI with the retrieval of the organization’s first gillnet of the season inside the vaquita refuge, a federally protected sanctuary for the world’s most endangered cetacean.
In collaboration with the Mexican Navy (SEMAR), Museo de la Ballena y Ciencias del Mar, local co-operative Pesca ABC and agents from PROFEPA (Federal Environmental Prosecutor for the Environment), Sea Shepherd crew members have retrieved their first illegal totoaba gillnet inside the critical zone of the Biosphera del Alto Golfo y del Rio Colorado, a rectangular shaped 150 square kilometer area, a few miles offshore from the town of San Felipe, Baja, Mexico.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is back in the Upper Gulf of California to continue its nearly five year commitment, under a new agreement with PROFEPA, to protect the vaquita porpoise from becoming ensnared in gillnets, as the species teeters on the brink of extinction.
