Mexico cuts the vaquita’s gillnet ban area by 86 percent

Gillnets are the biggest threat to the vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise ().

A gillnet is a wall of fine mesh hung in the water to catch fish or shrimp. To a porpoise finding its way by echolocation, the mesh is almost invisible. A vaquita that swims into one gets tangled and drowns, because it can’t come up to breathe.

Mexico first banned gillnets across the northern Gulf of California in 2015, as an emergency measure for two years (). In 2017 the ban became permanent (). The 2020 rules kept it and added a 225 km² Zero Tolerance Area, closed to all fishing and boat traffic (). Most of the vaquitas still alive have been seen or heard inside that area since (). The bans were hard to enforce. Fishers kept setting gillnets for shrimp, and illegally for the totoaba, a large fish whose dried swim bladder sells in China for US$20,000 to US$81,000 a kilogram, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime ().

On 14 October 2026, Mexico published new fishing rules for the northern Gulf. The Zero Tolerance Area stays as it was. The much larger area where gillnets are banned shrinks from about 11,100 km² to 1,562 km², a cut of 86 percent. The new rules took effect the next day ().

Fishers were told before the rules were published. Excélsior reported that a circular from Mexico’s fisheries commission, CONAPESCA, dated 6 October, gave the fishing federations of San Felipe and Golfo de Santa Clara the new coordinates. The same circular put a type of gillnet back on small-boat permits for the shrimp season ().

What changed

Gillnets are still banned for good inside a smaller area that closely follows the Vaquita Refuge. Outside it, fishers may use gillnets that CONAPESCA has authorized and marked ().

Fishing and boat traffic are still banned inside the Zero Tolerance Area. The one exception is a new channel about 350 metres wide. Small fishing boats may pass through it without stopping if their satellite tracking is on (). Next to it is a new Special Use Area, where diving is the only fishing allowed. In 2024 the Navy laid 216 hooked concrete blocks on the seabed there to snag illegal nets ().

The nightly fishing ban now runs from 19:00 to 05:00. Under the 2020 rules it started at 16:00. Every licensed small boat will need tracking equipment that can’t be tampered with. CONAPESCA and the Navy have 12 months to install it, counted from when the money for it is approved ().

These are the boundaries the government drafted in February and showed to CIRVA, the international committee that advises Mexico on vaquita recovery ().

Why the government made the change

At her morning press conference on 15 October, President Claudia Sheinbaum said in Spanish that “the aim is to protect the vaquita, but also that people can live.” She said the fishing families who have lived there for generations are not the ones who caused the vaquita’s decline ().

The decree says the rules had to be practical and based on science. A CIRVA working group proposed the new boundary after reviewing sighting records back to 1993 and the 2025 survey (). Early in 2026, officials told CIRVA that the 2020 rules had been impossible to enforce ().

Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a Mexican vaquita scientist who sat on the committee, told Reuters: “It is difficult to enforce a ban over a very large area, which includes vast areas with no recent records of vaquitas.” He also said that if no more vaquitas are killed, the ones left have a good chance of bringing the species back ().

What critics say

Gerardo Ceballos, a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Reuters: “We’ve reduced the vaquita’s protected area without actually having the technical or logistical capacity” to enforce it, and “we’re giving in to pressure from interested groups so a larger area can be exploited” ().

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Welfare Institute and NRDC said the rules lift the ban from thousands of square kilometres of the vaquita’s historical habitat. “Vaquitas don’t follow maps,” said Alex Olivera, who represents the Center in Mexico ().

The survey data back up part of that. In 2025, about a fifth of vaquita sightings were outside the area protected by concrete blocks. Many were in shallow water to the north-west (). In March, CIRVA warned that the new plan leaves part of that area without blocks. It asked for blocks to go in there right away ().

What happens next

Two details in the decree are worth watching. The tracking rule has no start date until its money is approved. The Zero Tolerance Area can also be redrawn by a later notice if acoustic and visual monitoring finds vaquitas using other areas ().

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