“Extinct” Dolphin Sighted

An extensive survey in 2006 failed to find any sign of the baiji
The critically endangered Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, has been sighted in eastern China, Chinese media report.
Scientists had recently declared that the baiji was probably extinct.

An international team of researchers spent six weeks looking for the creature last year without a single sighting.

But earlier this month the baiji was spotted and filmed by a local man, and confirmed by Chinese biologists, says official Xinhua news agency.

“I never saw such a big thing in the water before so I filmed it,” Zeng Yujiang from Anhui Province told Xinhua.

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

Wang Ding, also from the Institute of Hydrobiology and a leading authority on the species, said that the sighting could not be confirmed 100% because of the distance, but that it looked and acted like a baiji.

Wang Ding said a team of scientists would visit the area to see if they could find the creature.

Although the sighting provides a small cause for hope that the creature could survive in the wild, the outlook is not good, says the BBC’s East Asia editor Steve Jackson.

In the 1950s there were thousands of Yangtze River dolphins, but numbers have declined drastically due to industrial pollution, heavy river traffic and over-fishing.

If any wild baiji are found scientists will try to capture them and move them to a reserve where they would try to breed them if possible, Wang Ding said.

The last previous sighting of a wild baiji was in 2004, while the last captive baiji, Qi Qi, died in 2002.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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