Vaquita Face Extinction from Bycatch. Comment on Manjarrez-Bringas, N. et al., Lessons for Sustainable Development: Marine Mammal Conservation Polici…

2019

We are among the scientists who have documented the environmental and ecological changes to the Upper Gulf of California following the reduction in the Colorado River’s flow. We object to any suggestion that our research supports Manjarrez-Bringas et al.’s conclusion that the decline in the Colorado River’s flow is the reason for the decline in the population of the endangered vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus). Manjarrez-Bringas et al.’s conclusions are incongruent with their own data, their logic is untenable, their analyses fail to consider current illegal fishing practices, and their recommendations are unjustified and misdirected. Vaquita face extinction because of bycatch, not because …

Late Quaternary nearshore molluscan patterns from Patagonia: Windows to southern southwestern Atlantic-Southern Ocean palaeoclimate and biodiversity …

2019

Varied approaches (palaeobiodiversity, palaeobiogeography, bioerosion, geochemistry) to unique Patagonian late Quaternary molluscan assemblages in the southwestern Atlantic, with ages especially from interglacial Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e and MIS 1, provide large-scale and long-temporal palaeoenvironmental data for the southern SWA. Together with new patterns of δ18O and δ13C variations in modern, mid-Holocene, and Late to Middle Pleistocene shells of Protothaca antiqua (Bivalvia) and the coeval Pleistocene Tegula atra (Gastropoda), the overall sources of evidence illustrate possible responses to recent palaeoclimate and sea-ice changes around the southernmost SWA-western Antarctica, le…

Comment on Rojas-Bracho and Colleagues (2019): Unsubstantiated Claims Can Lead to Tragic Conservation Outcomes

2019