Without massive conservation efforts put into place soon, this endangered marine mammal will likely not make it to the end of the decade.

Any tourist activity that involves getting close to their habitat can stress the animals and disrupt their natural behavior.

Mexico's Gulf of California — one of the most biodiverse places on the planet — teems with 891 species of fish and a third of the world's cetacean species, including the smallest and most endangered ...

Mexico's Gulf of California — one of the most biodiverse places on the planet — teems with 891 species of fish and a third of the world's cetacean species, including the smallest and most endangered ...

and joins in the efforts to save vaquita from extinction through the cancellation of gillnet fisheries that incidentally catch this porpoise in the Upper Gulf of California, as announced today by the ...

A habitat completely free from gillnets is now the only chance for the vaquita to survive. Help us protect their habitat, the Upper Gulf of California, from gillnets. Take action now. While the ...

A tragedy is unfolding in Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California. Fatal entanglements in shrimp and fish nets—many of them cast by poachers—are driving the world’s smallest cetacean to extinction. In ...

Front and center on all of them is the tiny, critically endangered porpoise known as the vaquita. Identified only 50 years ago, the vaquita is endemic to Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California. Reaching a ...

Cutting-edge technology in a lab at Florida Atlantic University was used to digitize the skeleton of the rarest marine mammal in the world, a porpoise called the vaquita, ensuring that the animal ...

There are estimated to be fewer than 20 individuals left in a small area in the Gulf of California, the only place in the world where the vaquita is found, according to Sea Shepherd. Navy ...

The vaquita, found only in the Gulf of California, is an endangered species. (File pic) A rare porpoise has died in Mexico after being captured as part of a rescue effort for the species.

This story appears in the October 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine. Shortly after scientists discovered the species in 1950, they realized it was in trouble. Vaquitas were regularly ...