Mexico allows limited return of activists to help porpoise

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The environmentalist group Sea Shepherd said Thursday the Mexican government will allow it to return to the Gulf of Mexico to help efforts to save the critically endangered vaquita marina porpoise, but won’t allow the group to remove illegal gill nets.

It marks the latest Mexican government move that appears to give equal weight to sovereignty and fishing concerns, and the fate of the world’s most endangered sea marine mammal. Only about 10 of the elusive porpoises are believed to remain in the Gulf, the only place they live, and they cannot be held or bred in captivity.

For years, Mexico has relied on Sea Shepherd to remove most of the illegal nets that trap and drown vaquitas, while doing relatively little to combat violent attacks by poachers on the environmentalists' ships. The group estimates it has removed about 1,000 of the long, heavy nets over the last six years.

But the environmentalists were forced to leave the Gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortes, in January after a New Year’s Eve attack in which fishermen rammed a Sea Shepherd vessel with their boat; one of the fishermen later reportedly died of injuries sustained in that attack.

Since then, the job of locating and removing nets has been largely left to Mexico's navy, which has done little to stop fishermen setting nets to catch totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is a delicacy in China and sells for thousands of dollars per pound (kilogram).

The new agreement leaves the net removal process to Mexico's notoriously unreliable and pro-fishing National Commission for Aquaculture and Fisheries.

Under the agreement, announced Thursday but signed in August, Sea Shepherd said it will advise the Navy about any nets it finds, adding "the nets will be recovered and delivered by Mexico’s National...