The vaquita is the most critically endangered marine mammal on Earth, with fewer than 10 individuals remaining, facing extinction primarily from entanglement in illegal totoaba gillnets.
The welfare of individual vaquitas in their final years as a species is desperately concerning. Each entanglement in a gillnet means a cetacean drowning — an animal prevented from surfacing to breathe until loss of consciousness and death. The terror of entanglement and the slow process of drowning represent extreme suffering. With fewer than 10 individuals remaining, every death is both a welfare tragedy for an individual and a step closer to extinction. The failed captive rescue attempt demonstrated that even well-intentioned intervention can cause fatal stress in this most sensitive of species. The vaquita situation represents the ultimate failure of wildlife protection systems to prevent the extinction of a species despite decades of documented crisis.