Vaquitas often die in fishing nets Flip Nicklin/Minden/Getty

There are only around 60 vaquitas left, and it is now up to China whether the world’s smallest porpoise will escape extinction. That’s according to a report by campaign organisation the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

The critically endangered porpoise is only found in the Gulf of California, where it often gets tangled in gill nets targeting the totoaba, a similarly sized fish that is also endangered and whose fishing and international trade are banned.

The totoaba’s swim bladders, known as “aquatic cocaine”, are sought for their putative medical effects, and can fetch tens of thousands of dollars in China.


This trade still thrives there, despite a fall in prices and the ban, according to an investigation by the EIA.

“The totoaba trade is just not high priority for the Chinese authorities,” says Clare Perry, head of the agency’s Oceans Campaign. “Open illegal trade in Chinese markets clearly shows the lack of enforcement.”

EIA has monitored the market, including online trading, since April 2015, and conducted undercover investigations in Hong Kong and other parts of southern China.

Posing as investors, the agency’s investigators identified the coastal town of Shantou, in Guangdong province, as the centre of the trade.

The investigations also found that traders in the port city of Guangzhou have become more wary as a result of local enforcement efforts, with bladders moving from being openly sold in 2015 to only being offered under the counter this year. In contrast, the bladders were still openly on sale in Shantou this June.

Totoaba swim bladders are illegally sold in China EIA

The report identified only two publicly reported seizures of totoaba bladders, both in Hong Kong.

And despite their price having plummeted thanks to oversupply in the past few years, this may not last.

Traders have begun hoarding their stocks – sometimes as many as 1000 dried bladders each – until prices climb again, says the EIA’s report. And even today, a bladder weighing half a kilogram can sell for as much as $51,000.

The solution to saving the vaquita is most likely to involve ending China’s taste for the swim bladders.

“It is really clear what we have to do,” says Perry, who hopes a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species later this month will put more pressure on China and help coordinate the international effort to save the species.

There have been some positive moves recently. At a July meeting between Mexico and the US, the Mexican government promised to ban from this month the use of gill nets where vaquitas are found. Both countries also promised to increase enforcement efforts to halt the illegal totoaba trade.

And China agreed at a June 2015 meeting with the US to crack down on the trafficking of at-risk species such as totoaba.

Whether any of this materialises remains to be seen.

“Most traders and buyers aren’t even aware of the connection between the two species,” says Perry. “If we don’t stop the illegal trade, this will be a dual extinction.”

Read more: World’s smallest porpoise, the vaquita, may be extinct by 2022