We lost another one! The Chinese White Dolphin is going EXTINCT!

[Cheetah]

Rare white dolphin extinct, researcher says

BEIJING — An expedition searching for a rare Yangtze River dolphin ended Wednesday without a single sighting and with the team's leader saying one of the world's oldest species was effectively extinct.

The white dolphin known as baiji, shy and nearly blind, dates back some 20 million years. Its disappearance is believed to be the first time in a half-century, since hunting killed off the Caribbean monk seal, that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction.

A few baiji may still exist in their native Yangtze habitat in eastern China but not in sufficient numbers to breed and ward off extinction, said August Pfluger, the Swiss co-leader of the joint Chinese-foreign expedition.

“We have to accept the fact, that the Baiji is functionally extinct. We lost the race,” Mr. Pfluger said in a statement released by the expedition. “It is a tragedy, a loss not only for China, but for the entire world. We are all incredibly sad.”

Overfishing and shipping traffic, whose engines interfere with the sonar the baiji uses to navigate and feed, are likely the main reasons for the mammal's declining numbers, Mr. Pfluger said. Though the Yangtze is polluted, water samples taken by the expedition every 30 miles did not show high concentrations of toxic substances, the statement said.

For nearly six weeks, Mr. Pfluger's team of 30 scientists scoured a 1,000-mile heavily trafficked stretch of the Yangtze, where the baiji once thrived. The expedition's two boats, equipped with high-tech binoculars and underwater microphones, trailed each other an hour apart without radio contact so that a sighting by one vessel would not prejudice the other.

Around 400 baiji were believed to be living in the Yangtze in the 1980s. The last full-fledged search, in 1997, yielded 13 confirmed sightings, and a fisherman claimed to have seen a baiji in 2004, Mr. Pfluger said in an earlier interview.

At least 20 to 25 baiji would now be needed to give the species a chance to survive, the group's statement said, citing Wang Ding, a hydrobiologist and China's foremost campaigner for the baiji.

Mr. Pfluger, an economist by training who later went to work for an environmental group, was a member of the 1997 expedition and recalls the excitement of seeing a baiji cavorting in the waters near Dongting Lake. “It marked me,” he said in an interview Monday. He went on to set up the baiji.org Foundation to save the dolphin.

That goal having evaporated, Mr. Pfluger said his foundation would turn to teaching sustainable fishing practices and trying to save other freshwater dolphins. The expedition also surveyed one of those dwindling species, the Yangtze finless porpoise, finding less than 400 of them.

“The situation of the finless porpoise is just like that of the baiji 20 years ago,” Wang, the Chinese scientist, said in the statement. “Their numbers are declining at an alarming rate. If we do not act soon they will become a second baiji.”

Mr. Pfluger and an occasional online diary kept by expedition members traced a dispiriting situation, as day after day team members engaged in a fruitless search for the baiji.

“At first the atmosphere was 'Let's go. Let's go save this damn species,”' Mr. Pfluger said. “As the weeks went on we got more desperate and had to motivate each other.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061213.wdolphin1213/BNStory/Science/home


That's it then?

 

[tossi]

What a shame...

 

[Till]

I first read about them in "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams, written in the early 90s. Back then they still had hope to preserve the species and even tried to raise awareness with naming a beer brand after the animal.
It's really too bad that they didn't succeed.

 

[JerichoHill]

Its shy and nearly blind...nearly blind prolly doesnt help it survive anyways.

 

[Till]

Its shy and nearly blind...nearly blind prolly doesnt help it survive anyways.

It's nearly blind because the Yangtze River has pretty murky water, which makes it hard to see in it. So it relied on a sonar to navigate. That worked fine until ships with motor engines started to appear on the river...
In the book i mentioned, they recorded the noise level in the river (using a microphone made waterproof with a condom) and it was described as pretty bad.

 

[carlosMM]

Sad, but inevitable

 

[Godwynn]

It's what species do. As long as the dog and the human don't go that way I'll be fine.

 

[Cheetah]

A friend of mine is trying to argue that there is a theoretical possibility that the White Dolphins may still survive, even though they have extremely low numbers.

I thought it was impossible for a specie to recover from such low numbers, and from the article I posted it seems like at least some scientists agree with me. But I am unable to find any good information about this. Can anyone on CFC help with this?

 

[carlosMM]

Well, theoretically you need only one pregnant female.... The problem is that this can only work if you have the animals in captivity and know how to breed them - notoriously difficult with other dolphins, and near impossible with one that is hardly known.

 

[skadistic]

I wounder if they were tasty?

 

[carlosMM]

I wounder if they were tasty?

Quite. At least, as a guest of honor you'd get the embryo, and that was supposedly tasty. But it is rather tasteless of you to ask this now. and, btw, dogs are quite tasty, too.

 

[Kozmos]

Oh my GAWD..........I absolutely dont give a flying ****!

 

[carlosMM]

Oh my GAWD..........I absolutely dont give a flying ****!

You don't? Then why post here? Just to piss off those people who care about others ruining the ecosystems we depend on?

 

[Masquerouge]

So an animal I've never heard of before has disappeared. Mmmh. It's annoying this tendency we have to extinct species faster than we can discover them.

 

[Mauer]

As an evolved species ourselves , and having come from the same single celled evolved from nothing species, isn't this only further proof of OTSS!?

 

[Abaddon]

Its sad how crap us humans are.

 

[potatokiosk]

Its sad how crap us humans are.

Well, gee, I guess they should have just evacuated the entire country.

 

[fishjie]

its too bad i didnt get a chance to taste em while I was in China. everyone knows endangered animals taste better than non-endangered! YUM

sigh. i guess ill be content that I got to eat this

ps: yeah china doesnt give a crap about the environment or the ecosystem or anything. GO CHINA! W000t!

 

[Perfection]

Perfy says this is undesirable and ungood event

Perfy also predicts flame war between anti-environmentalists and eco-anarchists with sane people stuck in the middle.

 

[GinandTonic]

A friend of mine is trying to argue that there is a theoretical possibility that the White Dolphins may still survive, even though they have extremely low numbers.

I thought it was impossible for a specie to recover from such low numbers, and from the article I posted it seems like at least some scientists agree with me. But I am unable to find any good information about this. Can anyone on CFC help with this?

Well as I understand it your namesake appears to have come back from critically low numbers, hence its buggered genetic diversity. If I have it right it may be possible to come back from a score of individuals but with the removal of such genetic diversity the long term future of any species is dubious. Any environmental change and the mutation needed for survival may very well not be present.