There could be as little as six of them left. The vaquita, a small porpoise living in Baja California, is on the brink of extinction.
For Brut, filmmaker Léo Hamelin boarded Sea Shepherd US Sea Horse vessel to witness the crew’s sometimes controversial efforts to prevent illegal fishing — and give the vaquitas a chance to survive.
For Brut, filmmaker Léo Hamelin boarded Sea Shepherd US Sea Horse vessel to witness the crew’s sometimes controversial efforts to prevent illegal fishing — and give the vaquitas a chance to survive.
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00Do you see the skull in it?
00:08No, I think it's gone.
00:09Shit.
00:10Because counting that the skull is missing, this is 1.20 meters.
00:31The size of a vaquita average is 1.5 meters.
00:36So the size of this.
00:38That sucks.
00:46This will be the fourth dead one I've seen.
00:50I've never seen a live one.
01:05I traveled to Baja California in Mexico where I boarded the Seahorse.
01:09It's a vessel run by Sea Shepherd,
01:11a non-profit defending all marine wildlife against unregulated and illegal fishing.
01:17There were 19 of us on board.
01:19Everyone is in their 20s and 30s and comes from around the world.
01:23They volunteer their time for weeks, sometimes months at a time.
01:27And I wanted to spend a few days here to understand their commitment
01:31as well as the importance of this mission.
01:35It's great to have you guys on board.
01:37For those of you who don't work on ships normally, be vigilant at all times.
01:42So if you're on watch, be awake, be alert.
01:45Like if something goes wrong, you are being relied on to report it to someone else.
01:49And there's a lot of crew that's not on duty, that's sleeping.
01:53So when you're on duty, be vigilant.
01:55We are in an area that could be potentially dangerous and we are on a ship.
01:59Then obviously no alcohol, no drugs and no smoking.
02:03We are going to go underway and start monitoring the ZTA.
02:06The ZTA is a zero tolerance area.
02:08That is the area that no one is allowed to fish in or do any of those activities.
02:14And our role here is to make sure that no one is putting nets in the water.
02:18So that is going to be our goal for the next few days or foreseeable future.
02:23I discovered Sea Shepherd while I was at university studying biology.
02:30Two months after, I was already here.
02:34So over here we have the Vaquita refuge outline.
02:40The Vaquita population studies are done through acoustics.
02:44So the scientists put down some hydrophones and then they analyze the data.
02:49Because they're really difficult to see on the surface.
02:51The sea has to be really flat.
02:54They're really shy animals that go away from boats and from the noise.
02:58Can you show me what it's like, like the sound? Do we have access to that?
03:01Yes, I actually have.
03:10So yeah, this is how a Vaquita sounds like.
03:20I was not expecting that.
03:23The high frequency sounds, yeah.
03:27All the Vaquita corpses that had been retrieved, all the neck corpses,
03:33they were healthy, they didn't have any disease.
03:37They had food on their stomach.
03:40So their decline is solely because of the entanglement in fishing gear.
03:47It's a dolphin shape, then a porpoise shape.
03:50It's a skeleton of a porpoise.
03:54It is like that?
03:56That's a skeleton of a Vaquita.
04:02The Vaquita is a small porpoise that is endemic to this part of the Gulf of California.
04:07And it's so critically endangered that there could be as little as six of them left.
04:12But no one's fishing the Vaquita intentionally.
04:15They're bycatch.
04:17Fishermen are going after the Totoaba, a fish about the same size.
04:21Its swim bladder is highly valued in traditional Chinese medicine,
04:26which has created a black market tied to organized crime
04:30with deadly consequences for all of the marine animals that live here.
04:38One meter, point seven.
04:42They call the Totoaba the cocaine of the sea.
04:46So even people that were not fishermen,
04:49when we're jumping to pangas with nets to the sea,
04:52to try to catch Totoabas,
04:54because the value for their swim bladder was higher than gold.
05:00If the butcher got this, probably he would be very happy.
05:05He's going to be very upset because he lost the net
05:08and the swim bladder of this Totoaba.
05:11So he lost thousands of dollars.
05:21We have a situation right now with the panga fishing inside the ZTA.
05:27Which, all of this is illegal, what they're doing, right?
05:30Yes.
05:31We noticed the panga stopping inside the ZTA.
05:35And on close inspection, we saw that they are putting out fishing nets.
05:39So this guy here, it has like yellow and then blue. That guy's moving.
05:43So we then formed a navy of the activity that's going on inside.
05:48And they are now sending multiple ships.
05:52So we are keeping a close distance to the activities
05:56so we can continue to monitor what's happening.
05:59I see the defender just approached the panga.
06:06They seem to be speaking.
06:10Well, they're retrieving their nets out of the water.
06:14I think they also sometimes just take their chances,
06:17you know, to see how far they can get
06:20or how long it's going to take before we get to them.
06:26Is it leaving?
06:28It looks like it, right?
06:29Yeah, it kind of looked like they were starting to take off.
06:32With their leg.
06:35Now we're going to see how this shakes out.
06:37The defender is also on his way.
06:40The defender is a smaller naval vessel
06:43that is more agile and able to move more freely.
06:55I guess that panga is really personal.
06:58Oh, yeah.
06:59Definitely have nets in their hands.
07:03Yeah.
07:05I mean, it looks like their boat is full of net.
07:21What they do is they work on a two-strike system,
07:24meaning the first strike is like a warning
07:27and getting the details of the pangas and the people on board,
07:32and then the second strike is taking their nets
07:35and possibly facing people action.
07:37So it seems to be working
07:39because we don't have a lot of fishing inside the CTA,
07:42no pangas.
07:44We provide international eyes on this situation
07:48and we inform the world
07:50of what is exactly going on in the Vaquita Refuge
07:53and what we see every day that we're here.
07:58This is our chef, Matty.
08:01Smells really good in here.
08:03Every crew member here, during their stay,
08:06they will only eat vegan.
08:08There's a chef on board,
08:09so they have the luxury of having all of their meals prepared.
08:12Here we have the heads.
08:15This is Pablo.
08:17He is our medical...
08:19Medical?
08:20Medic.
08:21He's our medical officer, our medic.
08:24Cleaning service.
08:25Yeah, cleaning service.
08:29Everything.
08:30We're all a little bit of everything here.
08:32Any soap, a lot of all the stuff that we use
08:35is going to be biodegradable,
08:37including all of the detergent.
08:40So about every other day,
08:42somebody does all of the laundry
08:44and it just alternates between people.
08:46No matter who you are,
08:47you have some sort of chore on the boat.
08:50Then there's the cabin.
08:51At night, we run these red lights.
08:54So this is all for...
08:56Red light is sensitive on your eyes or good for your eyes.
08:59It keeps you from having night vision,
09:01so you can go out and you can still see
09:03if you need to go out on deck or anything like that.
09:05So this is the other cabin.
09:07We'll just make sure nobody's...
09:10Yeah, so it's safe.
09:12Nobody's in here, but...
09:14Oh, Richie is.
09:16How about, like, noise and privacy and, like...
09:19There's a lot of noise.
09:20There's not a lot of privacy.
09:23LAUGHS
09:34The weather just picked up.
09:37That woke me up because the ship is moving...
09:41a lot.
09:46Last night was a bit difficult.
09:48Around 3 in the morning,
09:49we had some really rough weather.
09:51I got really seasick,
09:53and I was surprised to find out
09:55that, actually, a lot of people on the crew
09:57also got seasick.
09:59The medic, the cook.
10:01There was no lunch prepared this morning.
10:07To just get used to it, like...
10:09Yeah.
10:10I didn't.
10:12I didn't.
10:13You don't have to tell mom.
10:15LAUGHS
10:17You don't have to tell poop.
10:19You just pointed out a rational problem.
10:21Yeah.
10:23Yeah.
10:24Good old 1700s.
10:26I miss that.
10:27LAUGHS
10:29I wouldn't leave that.
10:31Sea Shepherd has been operating in these waters
10:33since 2015.
10:35They call this Operation Milagro,
10:37which means miracle in Spanish.
10:39Over the years, they claim to have retrieved
10:411,000 nets from these waters.
10:43There we go, 100 nets done.
10:45But their mere presence here
10:47has created a lot of controversy.
11:18Milagro is already a high-risk campaign
11:20just due to the aggression that we come across
11:22every day with the poaching out here.
11:24So we have that to deal with in terms of risks.
11:27But the reality of the poaching climate right now
11:30here in the upper Gulf has changed quite a bit.
11:33The poachers are in broad daylight.
11:35They are fishing without masks on.
11:37They're using buoys to mark their entire nets.
11:40This is something that I personally haven't seen
11:43in all of my milagros.
11:45They're more aggressive than ever.
11:47We're getting more and more frequent attacks.
11:49They're attacking us.
11:51They're throwing stone and lead.
11:53And more and more bangas and poachers
11:56are coming to join this attack.
12:01They want to board that surf.
12:03Big rocks.
12:16Go, go, go!
12:18They're still there.
12:26So more small boats from the Navy are coming here.
12:36So the poachers keep throwing stones to the Farley moat.
12:41But the army is here.
12:43So the army is here.
12:44Now also small boats from the army came.
12:46Our defenses held very good.
12:49We were able to secure the ship.
12:52We had damage to the ship due to many rocks
12:58and two molotovs that were thrown.
13:04Even though we are all citizens of the world,
13:08there's always concerns when you are
13:11an international vessel operating inside another country.
13:16We know what the threats are
13:18and we know that it could get hairy.
13:21I'm not scared to be here.
13:23Even if there was threats,
13:25then I would still be here anyway.
13:28It's not really something that I take into consideration
13:31for my own safety.
13:33Of course, I take into consideration with the crew
13:37and try to keep them safe.
13:39But I also know that they are also here for a reason.
13:42They are also prepared for anything that could happen.
13:46From what we've seen in the past,
13:48we definitely won't back down because of safety concerns.
13:56Lunch, lunch, lunch.
13:59Lunch, lunch, lunch.
14:08You know, I'm waiting for that.
14:20I'm glad that you're feeling better.
14:22You were not feeling that good this morning.
14:28It's the most important job on the ship.
14:34There, it looks like it's three people.
14:36So in a case like this,
14:37what we need to do is go in towards them to get a better look.
14:40Yeah, closer, see if we can figure out if they have nets
14:44and what exactly they're doing.
14:48Right now, it's leaving the CTA,
14:50but they were stopped there for a while,
14:52so it's still writing down as a potential illegal fishing.
14:56Their behavior was suspicious.
15:02These ones were, this pango was inside of the CTA,
15:05so it was illegal.
15:08So this net has a big mesh size that catches flounders,
15:14and we saw as well in the animals caught on these nets,
15:19like from this pango and a couple more
15:23that we were able to film with the drone,
15:25we saw also sharks as well, small sharks.
15:30Underneath this gitterfish,
15:33this looks like different species of rays,
15:37and also gitterfish.
15:43It has been a difficult, challenging trip,
15:50I would say, all these years.
15:52Almost there, almost there.
15:55But what also makes me sad,
15:58and still makes me sad,
15:59is that, of course,
16:01vaquitas are not the only animal that die in the net.
16:07I've seen sea lions, sharks, turtles.
16:14We found whales and tingles in those nets.
16:19So it's all the life that there is here,
16:22that's one of the big surprises that I had
16:24the first time that I came here.
16:27How many different animals,
16:29how rich this area is,
16:32I'm sad because they were dying on those nets.
16:36They think that we are extremists.
16:39People tag environmentalists as people
16:43that are taking things out of proportion,
16:46and that they are exaggerating what is going on.
16:50And I think that's also the most dangerous part of all of it,
16:54if you really look at what's going on,
16:56we are not exaggerating.
16:59We've got some great equipment on this boat
17:02that we didn't have on the previous, on the Cutters.
17:04And I'm more than happy to explain to you
17:07how it works and what we can do with it.
17:09And it's essentially an echo sounder on steroids,
17:13and you can get 3D imaging of what is going on underwater.
17:17We are trying to see what is going on at the ocean bottom,
17:21see exactly how deep it is,
17:23and see if we can find any nets,
17:26and old ghost net remnants that are left behind,
17:29so we can remove them.
17:31And our purpose is to fill this area,
17:35and go up and down until this is completely purple.
17:38Over the course of many years,
17:40they've taken out hundreds of nets,
17:42and now we are having difficulty finding nets.
17:45I'm really excited about not finding any nets.
17:48I am looking to find nets,
17:50and I'm really trying my best.
17:52But I haven't found any,
17:54so I'm really stoked about that fact.
17:57Thank you, everyone.
17:59Have a nice day.
18:04Right now, the population is still estimated
18:08to be between 20 and 6 vaquitas left.
18:12If vaquitas were left alone,
18:15if all the dangers were removed from the sea,
18:18their population could go back to where it was.
18:22Every year that they do a survey,
18:24they see mothers with calves,
18:26which means that they're still breathing,
18:28they're still there, they're still fighting.
18:33One of my big takeaways
18:35is that our involvement does make a difference.
18:37If you are not part of the solution,
18:40if you don't stop getting fish,
18:42then you're definitely part of the problem.
18:44Maybe it feels like your actions as an individual
18:47can't have that big an influence,
18:49but it does.
18:51We can change the world,
18:53and we can change the fate of not only a species,
18:56but of an environment,
18:58and eventually of the world.