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First ever Extinction Alert from the IWC: the vaquita porpoise
“Despite nearly thirty years of repeated warnings, the vaquita hovers on the edge of extinction due to gillnet entanglement.” The plight of the vaquita porpoise has led the IWC to issue its first ever Extinction Alert. The vaquita is a small porpoise found only in the Gulf of California, Mexico. There are about 10 surviving animals and the IWC is speaking out now because it believes extinction is not yet inevitable.
IWC | International Whaling Commission
The International Whaling Commission - IWC The IWC was established in 1946 as the global body responsible for management of whaling and conservation of whales. Today the IWC has 88 member countries. The mandate has not changed but many new conservation concerns exist and the IWC work programme now also includes bycatch & entanglement, ship strikes, ocean noise, pollution and debris, and sustainable whale watching.
IWC Plenary: Day One
The first IWC plenary session in four years began with a welcome from the Slovenian Minister of the Environment and Spatial Planning, Uroš Brežan, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Samuel Žbogar and the Major of Piran, Denio Zadković . The Government of Slovenia is generously hosting the Commission meeting for the third time.
Commercial Whaling
The IWC is responsible for setting catch limits for commercial whaling (with the exceptions of Norway and Iceland, see below). The Commission receives advice on sustainability from its Scientific Committee before deciding catch limits, which are then set out in a document called the Schedule to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.
Entanglement in fishing gear
The full extent is hard to assess as most entanglements are never observed, but research suggests that over 300,000 whales and dolphins die annually due to entanglement in fishing gear, with additional unknown numbers also entangled in marine debris. This can have a devastating, long-term conservation impact on those populations that are already threatened, in some cases critically. Entanglement is also a serious welfare issue.
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