Rare Yangtze River Dolphins May Be Doomed Unless U.S. Expert Can Save the Day

The Yangtze River dolphin is rarer than the panda but also less famous and less cuddly--and that means it may be doomed, says visiting American dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry.

The huggable, black-and-white visage of a panda looking out from World Wildlife Fund advertisements around the world has helped raise thousands of dollars to save the fewer than 1,000 pandas left in Chinese forests.

But there are no international fund-raising efforts to save the 200 to 300 squinty-eyed, bat-nosed river dolphins. They are dying out as their only native home, China’s Yangtze River, becomes increasingly congested and polluted.

That’s where O’Barry comes in.

The trainer of the world’s most famous dolphin, Flipper, who starred in a U.S. television series in the 1960s, O’Barry met last month with Chinese dolphin experts in the central city of Wuhan. Now he is trying to launch an emergency campaign to save the dying dolphins.

“They’re beautiful. They’re bright and very friendly,” he said in a telephone interview. But without quick action, he said, “I’m afraid these dolphins may be doomed.”

O’Barry’s Chinese colleagues were more optimistic, but agreed that speedy action is needed.

“The number of dolphins has reached a critical level,” said Liu Renjun, an associate professor at the Wuhan Institute of Hydrobiology.

“The dolphins can be protected,” he said, but only with hard work and thousands of dollars that China lacks.

The Yangtze River dolphins are relatives of the common dolphin found worldwide. Like the common dolphin, they grow to more than 7 feet and have a dorsal fin. Their snouts are narrower, “like a small baseball bat,” O’Barry said, and their skin is whiter.

Both kinds rely mainly on sonar to find food and navigate--and this is part of the river dolphins’ problem.

The Yangtze River, long a commercial thoroughfare, has become jammed in recent decades with boats whose engine roars confuse the dolphins’ sonar. Scientists think the hum of propellers often lures dolphins to their deaths.

Commercial fishing is depleting their food source, and many dolphins get caught in fishermen’s hooks. Industrial pollution sickens those who survive.

Only two exist in captivity, in a cement tank at the Wuhan institute. There, Liu and about two dozen other researchers are trying to learn more about river dolphins, especially how to breed them.

No river dolphin has ever been born in captivity.

The team is trying to collect sperm from its 9-year-old male dolphin to artificially inseminate a 4-year-old female that Liu said is still two or three years from sexual maturity.

O’Barry was skeptical about the effort. He said he watched the sperm-collecting efforts “and they’re not getting anywhere.”

What’s more, he said, the concrete tank is not conducive to dolphin romance: “Their sonar bounces off the walls and that’s alien to them . . . and they’re not used to swimming in circles.”

O’Barry and the Chinese agree on the need to set up a sanctuary along the Yangtze River where the dolphins can live naturally but with special protections from fishermen and traffic.

Liu said the institute has located a potential site upstream from Wuhan where many river dolphins congregate naturally. The project will cost as much as $81,000, but so far the institute has no money.

Another dolphin expert, Dr. Zhou Kaiya of the Nanjing Normal University, has separately started building a large holding pond for dolphins in the channel between two Yangtze islands farther downstream in Anhui province.

O’Barry was enthusiastic about both plans, and said he will ask U.S. companies that do business in China to help underwrite them.

He also hopes to use his old Hollywood connections to organize a televised fund-raiser for the dolphins.

“I think this is the last chance,” he said.