Vaquita

Summary: What is a vaquita? Join Kiersten as she takes you under the sea to learn about this amazing porpoise.

 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

 

Show Notes:

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/525704/facts-about-the-vaquita

https://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/vaquita

https://porpoise.org/save-the-vaquita/

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/dolphin_porpoise.html

Vaquita Conservation Organizations

porpoise.org

 

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

 

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

 

Just a bit about my background: My name is Kiersten and I have a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior and did my thesis on the breeding behavior of the Tri-colored bat. I was a zookeeper for many years and have worked with all sorts of animals from Aba Aba fish to tigers to ravens to domesticated dogs and so many more in between. Many of those years were spent in education programs and the most important lesson I learned was that the more information someone has about a particular animal the less they fear them. The less they fear them the more they crave information about them and before you know it you’ve become an advocate for that misunderstood animal.

 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this fascinating journey, you won’t regret it.

 

This series of episodes will focus on the vaquita and my first favorite thing about the vaquita is, well, the vaquita!

 

What exactly is a vaquita? I’m so glad you asked. The vaquita is the smallest cetacean on the planet. Cetaceans are marine mammals in the order Cetacea which includes whales, porpoises, and dolphins. The vaquita is a porpoise. It is the smallest porpoise alive. 

 

The vaquita is also known as the Gulf of California porpoise, Gulf of California Harbor porpoise, cochita, and vaquita marina. Vaquita means “little cow” in Spanish and cochita means “little pig”. Both names are a reference to the grunting sounds they make. Their scientific name is Phocoena sinus which means “porpoise of the gulf” in Latin.

 

The vaquita was not officially named until 1958. The discovery of the vaquita is actually a strange but fascinating story involving three skulls found on the beach. In 1950, a University of California scientist named Kenneth Norris was walking along a beach north of Punta San Felipe in Baja, California when he came across a skull. It looked like the skull of a porpoise but not quite like others he had seen, so he decided to keep it for possible further research. (As a side note: he was able to do this because he was professor at a university with the correct permits to keep such items. Please do not pick up and keep skulls that you find on the beach today.) 

 

A year later colleagues of Professor Norris’s found two more similar skulls on the beach. Now that more than one example had been found, comparing them to other known cetacean skulls was the next step. When comparing the three skulls to other already identified cetacean skulls the scientists noticed enough considerable differences to conclude that this was a new, never-before-seen species of porpoise! Kenneth Norris published his findings in the Journal of Mammalogy in 1958 giving the vaquita the scientific name of Phocoena sinus meaning “porpoise of the gulf”.

 

It’s been 64 years since the discovery of the vaquita and we still know very little about their natural history, but we do know what they look like, so let’s talk about that. 

 

  As I mentioned before, the vaquita is small at only 4 to 5 feet in length and can  weigh up to 100lbs. Females tend to be larger than males. They have a typical porpoise shaped body that is curved and robust. The middle of the body will measure about 68% of the total body length. They have a small mouth with a slight protrusion of the upper jaw at the base of the melon, aka their head. Their dorsal fin, the fin on their back, is upright and relatively large when compared to other porpoise species. They have two front flippers on the under side at the front of the body with a double lobed tail. 

 

Their coloration is like a painted masterpiece with medium gray on the upper body fading to light gray halfway down their sides. The throat and belly are streaked with white like the organic strokes of a master painter. The mouth is ringed in black like perfectly applied lipstick, giving them the look of a know-it-all smile. A dark gray steak runs from the mouth to the flippers expanding as it reaches the flippers covering them in the same dark gray color. The eye is ringed with black and outlined with white. They are truly one of the most beautiful porpoises in the sea. 

 

The dorsal fins of vaquitas are unique enough they can be used like name tags. To study vaquitas in the wild, scientists needed a way to identify them without getting so close as to disturb their natural behavior, so they looked for something that would be easily seen from a distance. A big, ‘ole fin sticking up from their back fit the bill. The dorsal fins of marine mammals are often nicked or notched from various activities performed throughout their lives. Each individual vaquita dorsal fin will be unique to themselves. Scientists caught on quickly and took high resolution photos of the fins and created an ID guide for the animals they were researching. In 2008, they complied a photo ID catalog to help record the daily activities of the vaquitas.

 

One last thing before we finish up our first episode of the vaquita. I’ve been using the term porpoise a lot and want to clarify the difference between a porpoise and a dolphin. Many people use these two words interchangeably but they are two completely different animals. 

 

The difference is in their appearance including their faces, their fins, and their figures. Dolphins have elongated mouths called beaks while porpoises have very, short mouths that do not protrude past the head. The dorsal fin of dolphins is more curved or hooked while dorsal fins of the porpoise is more triangular. And in general, the dolphin’s body is more lean while our porpoise is a bit more portly. 

 

Dolphins also tend to be more talkative than porpoises but both are capable of making sound. Dolphins are definitely more prevalent than porpoises with 32 species of dolphin and only 6 species of porpoise. 

 

Just as a funny side note for all you trivia fans out there, the word ‘porpoise’ comes from the Latin porcus meaning ‘pig’ and piscis meaning ‘fish.’ So ‘porpoise’ technically means ‘pig fish’. 

 

Thank you for joining me for the first episode of Ten Things I Like About the Vaquita. 

 

Please visit porpoise.org to find out even more about the vaquita and discover what you can do to help this unique animal.

 

Join me next week for another ten-minute episode focusing on the vaquita. 

 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.