The Technodrome Forums - News about Dolphins

First some bad news:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070829/...in_dolphins_dc

Quote:

Dozens of dead dolphins washing up along the Mediterranean coast have alerted environmentalists to a virus they fear will become an epidemic, El Mundo newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The region's striped dolphins, a protected species, are being infected with a virus which has not been identified and has so far killed several dozen animals along the coast and may spread, the report said, quoting environmental experts.

"We are at the start of an epidemic," Javier Pantoja, a marine conservation official at the Environment Ministry, was quoted as saying.

An Environment Ministry spokesman confirmed that a meeting on the issue would be held in September to try to coordinate action between Spain's autonomous regions, but could not give details of the virus and its effects.

The virus is the latest in a series of difficulties facing the Mediterranean environment. This summer, beaches have been hit by a plague of jellyfish believed by climate experts to be due to warmer sea temperatures as well as over-fishing of predators such as tuna.

Not to sound negative but if this is a natural virus killing them off then so be it...but if it's man made...they'd better do something. But still...it's nature taking it's course. I mean after all Tazmanian Devils are becomming exinct due to some skin disease that's been raveging em the last 20 years. Just nature taking it's course.

Meanwhile here's some good news. Remember that Yangtze river dolphin they said was officially extinct a couple weeks ago?? Seems they spoke too soon!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070829/...in_sighting_dc

Quote:

A Chinese man has videotaped a large white animal swimming in the Yangtze river, which experts say is a dolphin species unique to China and feared extinct, the official Xinhua agency reported on Wednesday.

The last confirmed sighting of the long-beaked, nearly blind baiji was in 2004. After an international team failed to find a single dolphin on a six-week expedition last year the species was classified as critically endangered and possibly extinct.

But the video from central Anhui province may renew slender hopes for the survival of the creatures also known as white-flag dolphins and traditionally considered a deity by local people.

"I never saw such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it," dolphin-spotter Zeng Yujiang told Xinhua. "It was about 1,000 meters (yards) away and jumped out of water several times."

Wang Kexiong, of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said experts at the institute had confirmed the footage was of a baiji.

The report did not say if there were any plans to try and locate the dolphin again, or try and protect it from the river hazards -- ranging from pollution and aggressive fishing to heavy shipping traffic -- that originally decimated the species.

In the late 1970s, scientists believed several hundred baiji were still alive, but by 1997 a survey listed just 13 sightings. Found only in the Yangtze river, it is related to freshwater species found in the Mekong, Indus, Ganges and Amazon rivers.

The government has set up a reserve in a lake in central Hubei province but failed to find any baiji to put in it. The last captive dolphin, Qi Qi, died in 2002.