I've mentioned this Nat Geo documentary before (see trailer here), but this is the first time I've watched it.
This is not another documentary about nature. It's about war.
The plight of the vaquita porpoise is one of the saddest stories of what happens when nature encounters the worst in human nature. The basic thread here is that totoaba fish poaching in the Sea of Cortez is out of control, and the handful of vaquitas remaining (maybe fifteen IF we're lucky, down from a few hundred a decade ago) are being caught and killed in the fishing nets. The tragedy is that this carnage is comepletely avoidable, because it doesn't have anything to do with catching fish to feed people. It has to do with a trade in totoaba bladders for "traditional medicine" for the Chinese market.
You expect to see confrontations in any documentary of a poaching situation, but you don't expect to see comabt. The bladder trade is so lucrative it has created its own criminal enterprise and is being pursued by existing drug cartels as well. The money involved is big enough to corrupt many of the officials involved. Fishermen - some criminal, some in debt to the cartels, and some simply trying to survive - are in the middle. A couple of the most startling scenes here are fishermen actually firing at intercepting naval vessels and a mob of local citizens, dependent on the income the bladders bring, besieging a military base until three fishermen arrested for poaching are released - which they are. The Chinese government pays lip service to shutting off the demand, but it seems to only get worse. The totoaba as a species are not doing well, either. The demand may drive two species extinct.
Conservationists just trying to help the porpoises deal with imminent dangers, including being shot at, while trying to help stop the poaching. People from Sea Shepherd and other groups remove illegal nets, tons of them, but new nets appear. We see the capture and death of a vaquita, which dooms a desperate effort to keep them alive by creating a captive population.
At the end, we see a bit of hope - an oh-so-rare filming of surviving vaquitas - and declarations of determination by Mexican officials. Conservationists, too, are fighting to the bitter end, which might still be staved off. It will be a very near thing. The closing text tells us that DNA studies indicate the vaquita could be reestablished even though there are so few. (There is precedent here: the European bison or wisent was bred back into health from six animals, although there was close management of the breeding.)
If you want to know more, Brooke Bessenen's book Vaquita is a must-read: the book is here and my review is here.
No comments:
Post a Comment