Disappearing Finless Porpoises in China, and the brave woman who has been working desperately alone to save them

NA ZHANG
NA ZHANG
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read

Porpoises are a group of small toothed whales that are closely related to oceanic dolphins. Yet Porpoises have shorter beaks and spade shaped teeth comparing to dolphins. The distribution of porpoises is highly specialized, majorly along the coast of Eastern Asia.

Specifically, there is a species of porpoises that is finless and mostly found along the Indo-Pacific coast, Neophocaena phocaenoides. A subgroup of finless porpoises even lives in the Yangtze River and big lakes such as Dongting Lake and Boyang Lake nearby,which is the only subspecies of porpoises that lives in freshwater. They are called “river swine” in Chinese, as they do bear some resemblance to the look of pigs like the bulbous head and comparatively flat back.

For unmemorable long time in history the Chinese have lived with finless porpoises which were often worshipped as river goddesses by fishermen. As they seemed to be able to predict the weather and people believed that to see a Yangtze River Porpoise was a good omen that foretold a peaceful trip. However, as the process of industrialization gradually overthrows the old, static, and idyllic picture of rural China and reshapes the whole landscape in a haste. The long, sustained life of cetaceans in China is now ruptured into distinct pieces whose future is as unpredictable as floating logs in raging waters.

Currently, the finless porpoise is listed on Appendix II of the convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals as to its current “unpromising and unfavorable conservational status”. However, the condition of finless porpoise in the region of China is not only unpromising, it is DEVASTATING.

Picture of dead seawater finless porpoises on coast

It all began decades ago, although most scientists believe the population of cetaceans started to decrease after 1950s, in 1980 there was still a population of 500 Baiji dolphins in the Yangtze River and thousands finless porpoises in the rivers and coasts of East China sea. Yet starting from 1980s, progression of industrialization has led to waterway overuse, water and soil pollution and over-exploitation of water resources while fossil fuel-powered fishing vessels together with booming market of fish consumption resulted in rapid depletion of wild fish resources and deprivation of food for the river and coast cetacean population. In 1990, there was around 2700 finless porpoises in the Yangtze River [2]. In middle 1990s, people began to notice the significant decrease of cetacean population in Yangtze River, especially the number of Baiji Dolphin spotted was dropped to less than one hundred [1]. Several conservational measures were proposed in meetings held by environmental protection agencies and researchers attempted to implement some of these measures in cooperation with local governments. Yet very few of these results had achieved meaningful results. For example, the relocation program of Baiji dolphin ended up having only relocated one Baiji and even this one died after several months.

When it came to the 2000s, there had been no formal or informal report of Baiji Dolphin in Yangtze River for several years. Until a final survey carried out in 2006 verified this unique species’ final demise. What may serve as the remaining relief was that the finless porpoises were still frequently seen on the surface of the river, although their population was estimated to be around the level of less than two thousands.

Yet in any sense, following the extinction of Baiji, the fate of finless porpoises in China could not be any better if no significant conservational attempts were implement upon them. The year of 2006 was also the year that Three Gorges Dam Project was finally finished and the breeding sites of countless species of fishes were cut short. The resulting rapid decrease of fish population since the establishment of Three Gorges Dam in Yangtze River had very probably led to a famine among Finless Porpoises as many dead bodies of Finless Porpoises were washed to the shore in the following year and people found they were all starved to death with empty stomach. Finless Porpoise are also hunted by humans through drive hunting and affected by other anthropogenic factors such as by catch, food competition, and environmental pollution.

The dire situation of Finless Porpoises of Yangtze River had attracted attention of many conservational organizations including WWF. Further, a relocation program for finless porpoises was again carried out with comparatively more success for finless porpoises in Yangtze River with around a group of 80 adults relocated in the new habitat and around 10 baby porpoises were born every year. Yet if no effectual measures were taken to improve their living environment in Yangtze River, the wild population would surely die out within 5 to 10 years as their numbers were estimated to decrease at a rate of around 6.4% every year.

There are currently several organizations in China that take the investigation and protection of Finless Porpoises as one of their aims. The major obstacles faced by these organizations is that local governments are reluctant to stop any of the ongoing projects threatening porpoises’ living space. “All the local governments care about is GDP and the wild population of porpoises has just NO HOPE.” said one officer in the Zoology Department of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

While it seems that no one currently cares about the finless porpoises along the coast of East China Sea except one lady, Zengying Ren.

Born in the province of Shangdong, Zengying Ren’s father was a seaman for a local fossil oil company and had cultivated in her a love of nature and sea. Although graduated with the highest grade in college, Zengying soon found that she was alienated by her colleagues as the only woman in the fossil oil company and turned her attention to bird watching and hiking.

Through a close interaction with nature, not only Zengying was taken by the wondrous beauty of it, but also she was shocked by the scale and progress of human’s reshaping of nature and the influences industrialization had exerted upon environment and ordinary people’s lives. Then she decided to make changes.

She was called “Sister Goddess” made up by the local residents of Dongying, in Shandong province of China, since she was the first one and also the bravest, among all people who lived under the daily harm of air pollution from local fossil oil industry, to speak out in public and to try to ignite everyone’s awareness over importance of environmental and natural protection, and the beauty of wild nature .

Her attention was turned to finless porpoise firstly to Yueyang in Hunan province a few years ago, and then to the group living in the coast in East China Sea. Seawater finless porpoises were comparatively less noticed as their number seemed still plenty. However, Zengying Ren noticed that these seawater porpoises are also facing enormous threat from land making and environmental degradation. “There are numerous seawater finless porpoises dying out of anthropogenic causes every year, ” Zengying said, “If no stringent regulations were implemented in the future, we would not be able to see both the freshwater and seawater finless porpoises within a few years.”.

References:

[1]http://www.wwfchina.org/wikidetail.php?id=1

[2] http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/43205774/0

[3]https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/8979-China-s-finless-porpoise-moved-to-cleaner-quieter-habitat

[4]http://us.whales.org/case-study/baiji-first-dolphin-to-be-declared-extinct-in-modern-times

[5] Parsons, E. C. M., and T. A. Jefferson. “Post-mortem investigations on stranded dolphins and porpoises from Hong Kong waters.” Journal of Wildlife Diseases 36.2 (2000): 342–356.

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