White Dolphin Functionally Extict

An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in nearly fifty years another mammal, specifically an aquatic mammal, has gone extinct. In this case, it was the white dolphin, also known as the Baiji, which used to live in the Yangtze River in China. The dolphin had been known to exist for the last 20 million years."

Comments

Re:Oops!

[Knara]

According to TFA, it wasn't pollution, but rather overfishing and shipping traffic that did them in.

Re:Ironic Article Timing

[Whalou]

Except that the "+1" mammal from New Zealand in that equation has been dead for 16 million years.

Re:Cataloguing DNA for future use

[TheCodeFoundry]

This is the intent of the http://www.all-species.org/ ALL Species Foundation.

Their mission is to "The ALL Species Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the complete inventory of all species of life on Earth within the next 25 years - a human generation."

A Wired article http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,50942, 00.html/ about them has some interesting information.

Re:Oops!

[Nasajin]

I've just contacted the associate professor in cetacean research at my local university, and asked specifically what the cause of the dolphin's extinction is. Apparently, the extinction is a combination of "pollution from industry, habitat loss due to damming, and incidental catch [i.e. fishing]". His words, not mine. I'd hope that he has a bit more knowledge about the issue than the journalists at CNN do.

Re:Oops!

[siufish]

From their website:

The decline of the Baiji and the critical situation of the finless porpoise appears to not be directly influenced by the water quality of the Yangtze. Within the framework of the Expedition, scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology did simultaneously investigate the chemical composition of the Yangtze river water and its particulate load. Scientists took both water and sediment samples from 30 different locations all along 1750 kilometers of the river. Although the Yangtze does have an altogether high degree of pollutant build-up, at this time, as Beat Mueller from Eawag pointed out, there are no indications of toxic pollutants in high concentrations.

(Emphasis mine.)

Here is some information on the staff at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology.

Not to discount your source, but I'd hope that they have a bit more knowledge about the issue than your associate professor.

And please, /.ers, stop knee-jerking. That's not what geeks do.

Douglas Adams wrote about the baiji dolphin

[monkeybrain]

The late Douglas Adams (along with Mark Carwardine) wrote a book titled Last Chance to See about a number of animals on the brink of extinction. The chapter Blind Panic was all about the baiji dolphin's predicament. Practically blind, the baiji dolphin relied sonar to navigate the Yangtze river - the trouble is that the Yangtze is really busy and hence noisy and polluted. The baiji didn't stand a chance, though from the book it seemed that the Chinese did put a lot of effort into trying to save them.

Scott

Re:Top Of the Food Chain, Ma!

[quizzicus]

very few of the extinctions throughout history were caused by humans.

Yeah, it's not like we've killed off so many species that scientists refer to the modern era as the Holocene Extinction Event, or the Sixth Extinction; or are claiming that this is the fastest mass extinction in Earth's history, giant meteors included. No, there's hardly any extinction going on.

Please perform at least a cursory Google search before making broad scientific claims.