The Vaquita: The World's Most Endangered Animal You've Never Heard Of

By Jerry Sullivan, Wear What Matters

There are fewer than 20 vaquitas left on earth.

Read that again. Fewer than twenty. Not twenty thousand. Not two hundred. Twenty living souls in the waters of the Gulf of California — the last survivors of a species we are losing in real time, in our lifetime, entirely because of us.

Most people have never heard of the vaquita. She is the smallest porpoise on earth — delicate, distinctive, and almost impossibly rare. She wears dark rings around her eyes like a mask and moves through the water with a quiet grace that most human beings will never witness. Not because she lives somewhere remote or dangerous. But because there are almost none of her left.

She is disappearing not with a roar but with a whisper. Caught in illegal fishing nets intended for another species. Forgotten by a world too busy to notice something it never knew existed.

I painted these animals because I needed people to see them. The more I learned about the vaquita — her smallness, her beauty, her impossible situation — the more I understood that anonymity is part of what is killing her. You cannot fight for something you have never heard of. You cannot grieve something you did not know existed.

So say her name. The vaquita.

She is here right now — barely — in the waters of Mexico while the world moves on without her. Scientists have called her recovery nearly impossible. But nearly impossible is not the same as gone. And as long as she is still here there is still something worth fighting for.

A portion of every purchase at Wear What Matters is donated to wildlife conservation through the World Wildlife Fund — because the vaquita deserves more than our silence.

Wear the mission. Shop the Vaquita Tee.