In 2012, the vaquitas — the most endangered marine mammals — were on the brink of extinction. Grim predictions about these small porpoises found only in a narrow habitat in the northern Gulf of California and Mexico indicated that the species would likely be extinct by 2015.

It was at this time when William Whittenbury, then a local high school student in Palos Verdes, took up the cause. He had first caught wind of the vaquita when he was a volunteer at Cabrillo Aquarium in San Pedro, and then when he began to volunteer as a junior docent at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center during his freshman year, he chose the vaquita as the subject of his research project.

“At the time in 2012, there were 250 of them left and we thought that sounded really bad,” Whittenbury says. “So I did my paper on that and I remember thinking, ‘We need to do something about this.’”

At the time, he was the president of his chapter of the student-led Muskwa Club, and he pitched the vaquitas as a service project for the group. The other students agreed, and in that moment, the local Save the Vaquita movement was born.

For Whittenbury, making an effort to save just one species was important, especially since the vaquita serves as a bellwether for other marine life. The ocean is an interconnected ecosystem, so if one species is lost, or if illegal fishing practices are allowed to continue unchecked, more species might follow.

“As an organization, we decided we have to draw the line here,” Whittenbury says. “We can’t just let this one go. If not this, then what happens next? Where does it end?”

The project started small, emphasizing awareness. They did presentations at local schools and aquariums to educate students and the public about what the vaquita is, what is happening to them and how the public can help.

These small-scale projects culminated in a major event that Whittenbury, alongside his mother Beth, rolled out in 2013 known as International Save the Vaquita Day. In that first year, they strung together people from Hawaii all the way to the East Coast, with ten awareness events taking place across the country.

“How it developed was we just kept thinking how we could add on, how we could make it bigger,” Beth says. “We realized we could hit all the coasts, and then we found someone in Oklahoma. It was really a very grassroots thing. Who do we know who we could convince to go sit at a table in an aquarium if we get them the in to the aquarium for the day?”

From left: -Erick Ponce-Furlos, representative from State Assembly Member Al Muratsuchi's office
-mentor Daryl Ide
-students Orion Hingley, Jason Ross, and Noah Silva
-William Whittenbury
-Student Emma Silva
-Mentor Ally Doyle
-Toberman Neighborhood Center staffers Yvette Arteaga and Adrian Cardona

The Whittenburys assembled packets with instructions and sent them to representatives to help them conduct awareness events across the nation. Since then, the movement has only grown as more organizations that advocate for the vaquita have taken up the day of advocacy. Now, International Save the Vaquita Day has been recognized by the United Nations and the Jane Goodall Foundation.

This awareness is crucial for the vaquita because it is endangered mostly because of illegal fishing practices. As a result, the solution often involves the creation and enforcement of protective policies by the Mexican government. Consumer choices and the policies of other governments can place pressure on the Mexican government to create such policies, which means the public has the power to impact these decisions.

“A big thing that’s happened is because of public outcry that’s resulted from these awareness activities, and particularly from International Save the Vaquita Day, Mexico has been influenced to pass stronger protections for the vaquita in their area,” Whittenbury says.

Now, the local Save the Vaquita movement has turned its sights on providing more than awareness by backing its advocacy with technical projects meant to help the cause. On March 16, the group rolled out a drone engineering project — dubbed Project Proteus — that has been years in the making. This project was spearheaded by students at the Toberman Neighborhood Center in San Pedro in partnership with early-career professionals from local companies who served as mentors to students in the STEM program there. The result is an unmanned air vehicle with an 8-foot wingspan meant to fly around the vaquita habitat to track the population and to detect illegal fishing activities.

The event on March 16 was a major milestone for the program in which students could participate in designing a product that would actually contribute to the effort to save the vaquitas.

“It’s great to have these kinds of experiential learning for students because you can learn a lot in a classroom, but there are some things you can only learn by getting on the ground and doing stuff and organizing events and educating the public,” Whittenbury says. “On the other side of the puzzle, I think the student volunteers bring a lot of energy and new ideas. Sometimes people who have been working on this for a long time might just have a certain vision for how things work, then the students come in with an out-of-the-box idea and they go, ‘Oh yeah, we could do that.’”

The drone was named in honor of Don Eichhorn, a late mentor of our organization who was also heavily involved as a volunteer with the Los Serenos de Point Vicente organization at the Pt. Vicente Interpretive Center and at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. His wife, Linda, formally christened the plane during the ceremony

Another team of mechanical engineering senior design students at Northwestern University are working on a different engineering project for the cause. This one, which should conclude in June, focuses on designing a system and a submersible to travel underwater to detect gillnets and C-pods, which are underwater apparatuses used to listen for vaquita noises to indicate their location. However, C-pods can be difficult for researchers to find and recover to gather data. This project will help solve that issue.

For Whittenbury, these projects, as well as recent legislation and stricter enforcement of policies by the Mexican government, have proven that individuals — even students — can have an impact on a large scale.

“It feels really good [to see results],” Whittenbury says. “It’s really cool for the students who worked on this both in the past and currently to be able to point to this progress and see that you had a direct impact on this stuff.”

Despite predictions of extinction by 2015, the vaquitas are still around. Not only that — the population is now beginning to grow again, with the potential to reach 600 individuals in 50 years.

But Whittenbury and his organization are far from done. They have set their sights on planning for International Save the Vaquita Day 2024, and they are now pushing for the expansion of zones protected from gillnet fishing in the vaquita habitat.

“The lesson that we’ve learned from this is that there is always something you can do,” Whittenbury says. “The constant takeaway we’ve had as an organization is never take no for an answer. No, we’re not going to accept that it’s time to give up on this species or that kids don’t have a big enough voice to make an impact on this, or that there’s nothing you can do about it.”

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