Eyewitness to Extinction: The Chinese River Dolphin - Baiji - Going, Going, Gone

By Dr. Robbins Barstow, CSI Director Emeritus

For millions of years the Yangtze or Changjiang River in China has been the home of a unique species of freshwater dolphin known in recent years as the Baiji (scientific name: Lipotes vexillifer). Today this animal is extinct.

To me it really is a big thing to have a marine mammal that has lived on our planet literally for millions of years actually become extinct during our watch. It is a tragic reminder of the ongoing conflict between human civilization and the natural world. We live in a world-transforming time.

Chinese River Dolphin at the Hydrobiology Institute, Wuhan, China.
Photo by Margaret Barstow, September 1985.

Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Expedition 2006

In the fall of 2006, an international expedition, sponsored by the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan, China, with the help of August Pfluger's Swiss-based baiji.org Foundation, carried out a six-week intensive search of the Yangtze River habitat of the Baiji, or Chinese River Dolphin. Scientists from six nations traveled on two research vessels for more than 1,000 miles up and down the river between the Three Gorges Dam and the Shanghai Delta, desperately seeking to find some sign of the Baiji. They used the most technologically advanced instruments to carry out both high-performance visual searches and underwater acoustical surveys.

By the end of the journey, the two dozen scientific crew members reported sighting more than 300 Yangtze Finless Porpoises, another endangered species of cetacean also inhabiting the river. But they did not see a single Baiji.

At a press conference in Wuhan on December 13, 2006, the naturalist economist from Zurich, Switzerland, August Pfluger, the expedition's organizer, announced: "We have to accept the fact that the Baiji is functionally extinct. It is a tragedy, a loss not only for China, but for the entire world." The only other marine mammal to become extinct in the last century was the Caribbean Monk Seal, believed to have been killed off by hunting and overfishing in the 1950's.

For decades China had been seeking, with the help of international scientists from around the world, to find ways to save the Baiji, as they have succeeded in doing with the Giant Panda. But increasing industrialization and commerce along the Yangtze has over the years inexorably resulted in the destruction of the Baiji's natural habitat and food resources. No place could be found for the Baiji to be saved.

A key participant in the survey was Dr. Wang Ding, China's leading Baiji expert, Deputy Director of the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan. Now Wang Ding warns: "The situation with the Finless Porpoise is just like that of the Baiji 20 years ago. Their numbers are declining at an alarming rate. If we do not act soon they will become a second Baiji."

Global River Dolphin Populations

The Baiji was one of four unusual species of cetaceans in the taxonomic category of "Platanistidae" - the freshwater river dolphins. The remaining three species are the Ganges and Indus River Dolphins (the "Susu"), in India, Pakistan, and Nepal; the Amazon River Dolphin (the "Boto"), in Brazil and Peru; and the LaPlata River Dolphin (the "Franciscana"), in Argentina and Brazil.

How these similar freshwater river dolphins evolved on separate continents is not clearly understood. They grow to between six and eight feet in length, and they all have extremely long, narrow beaks, with rows of small, sharp teeth, flexible necks, and broad, paddle-like flippers. Their eyesight is extremely limited, because their river habitats are generally very muddy and silty. But all of them have developed highly effective systems of echolocation to search out the small fish they chiefly feed on. The other river dolphin populations, while increasingly threatened, seem to be holding their own.

Personal Connection

The demise of the Baiji has a deep personal significance to me. Few Americans have known or cared much about the Chinese River Dolphin. Even fewer have ever had the opportunity to see one alive.

In the early 1980's, I learned that a live Baiji was being maintained at the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan, Hubei, of the People's Republic of China. During the course of a three-week trip which my wife Margaret and I made to China in September 1985, we made special arrangements for a side-trip while on a cruise down the Yangtze River to visit this Institute, on the outskirts of Wuhan, on the campus of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

There we were introduced to Professor Chen Peixun and several of her colleagues, including Wang Ding, who at that time was a graduate student at the Academy. After a tour of their laboratory and museum, they took us to see, in a large, circular pool inside a well-guarded, roof-covered, outdoor enclosure, the only living specimen of a Chinese River Dolphin existing in captivity anyplace in the world. It was a rare and fascinating sight.

Dr. Wang Ding and Professor Chen Peixun with Margaret
and Robbins Barstow in Wuhan, China,September 1985.

"Qi Qi" (Chee Chee)

This captive Baiji had been given the name of "Qi Qi" (Chee Chee). It had been obtained 5 years earlier, in January 1980, from some river fishermen who had caught it live in a pool of shallow water near a sand bank. It had been severely wounded by fishing hooks during capture, and required very special care for some months after it had been taken to the Hydrobiology Institute. It had been treated with Chinese medicines until the wounds finally healed, and since then it had gained weight and remained healthy and active.

Chee Chee was a male Chinese River Dolphin, a little more than 6 feet in length. Bioacoustical studies had been made of its echolocation abilities during feeding, since its eyesight was extremely limited. Chee Chee swam around the pool both clockwise and counterclockwise, and sometimes in a figure 8. Among the playthings placed in the tank with the dolphin from time to time was a round, floating inner tube which sometimes the dolphin, of its own accord, picked up with its small, triangular dorsal fin and pulled around the pool.

My wife took snapshots and I took a significant amount of original 8mm film footage of Chee Chee and the Institute staff. I have since then had my film scenes transferred to VHS video and DVD for further distribution.

Chinese River Dolphin at the Hydrobiology Institute, Wuhan, China.
Photo by Margaret Barstow, September 1985.

End of an Epoch

Census cruises on the Yangtze River had indicated that at best only a few hundred Baiji still survived in the wild at the time of our visit, and the population was dwindling rapidly. In the years since 1985, a number of international conferences and workshops have been held seeking to develop and implement a variety of measures to keep the species alive. All efforts, however, to establish special off-river reserves and to initiate captive breeding programs proved to be unsuccessful. In the end all failed.

Chee Chee himself, the last known of the species, died in July 2002 at the age of 25. Finally in December 2006, just 21 years after we had been to Wuhan, the millions-of-years-old story of the Baiji came to its tragic close with the announcement by the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Expedition 2006 that they all were gone.

We did not know it at the time, but our close encounter with Chee Chee in 1985 had made us eyewitnesses to extinction.