A boat looking to protect a critically endangered porpoise in the Sea of Cortez was fired on by fisherman this weekend.
The boat belonged to the group “Sea Shepherd” and their job is to protect the critically endangered Vaquita inside of its protected habitat where fishing is banned.
But that hasn’t stopped poachers putting down gillnets that ensnare and kill the vaquita. The poachers are trying to catch the totoaba fish, whose bladder sells in China for a high price and is considered a treatment for numerous ailments.
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On Saturday morning, poachers fired on the Sea Shepherd boat, which had been confiscating their nets.
Four panga boats confronted the Sea Shepherd boat. In a video released by Sea Shepherd, the fisherman appear to fire into the water near the conservationists' boat.
Afterward, on a video released by Sea Shepherd, Jacqueline Le Duc, the captain of the boat, described the events that led up to the shooting.
"They started coming at us, four pangas, just surrounded us, chased us. And then it stopped again. And bam! It all came again. And then they just chased us, chased us. They stopped and then we heard gunshots," Le Duc said.
Experts estimate there are just over a dozen vaquitas left on the planet. All of them live in the protected zone in the Gulf of California.
"These people that attacked the boat this weekend, they're not fisherman, they're criminals," said JP Geoffroy, Sea Shepherd's Campaign Leader for its mission to protect the Vaquita. "These poachers are dealing with the totoaba, that is also endangered. It's not only the Vaquita there."
