Message from Captain Paul Watson -- Sea Shepherd News
Dec. 14, 2006 -- I am steaming angry today. The Yangtze river dolphin called the Baiji has been officially declared extinct.
A team of 30 scientists and crew from China, and six other nations searched a 1,000-mile heavily trafficked stretch of the Yangtze, where the Baiji once thrived. After six weeks of intensive search, not a single dolphin was spotted.
The only other cetacean in the river is the finless porpoise and there are only about 400 remaining.
This once rare, nearly blind white dolphin that has survived for millions of years is now gone, exterminated by human development, a victim of “progress” the Chinese say.
The Chinese had once declared it to be the “Goddess of the Yangtze” and predicted that when the Baiji disappears the river will be dead.
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