Times of India, Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Correspondent : Surojit Mahaland Bis

NEW DELHI: Endangered Gangetic dolphins which had recently dragged country's wildlife mandarins into troubled waters, have started behaving humane to them. In the last summer survey between May to June, 473 of them showed up to off-shore men and current population drives of its proliferation seem fruitful. Of 473, adults were 281, 71 sub-adults, 41 neonate, 59 calves and 21 unclassified. Explaining the success, the dolphin conservation team chief Patna University scientist RK Sinha, who is also an IUCN member for the Cetacean Specialist Group, said on Saturday, "The Ganga becomes highly choppy in summer. Sightings are difficult. But in the last winter's (February-March) upstream survey in over 500 km, from Manihari (bordering West Bengal) to Buxar (bordering UP), total sightings were 777 (including 418 adult, 133 sub-adult, 83 neonate, 98 calves and 45). Things are looking up, and I am getting cooperation from the district administrations and wildlife department officials." The riverine dolphins, or Indian sush or shushuk, in the Ganga are called Platinista Gangetica, a name attributed to it by Calcutta Botanical Garden's first chief William Roxberg. Three years back these underwater, blind but predator mammals had evoked proactive move by Patna High Court Justice RS Dhawan, who had called nine Bihar district magistrates and superintendents of police and rebuked them for failing to stop its random poaching for flesh and oil. Such a massive rebuke to so many district mandarins at a time never took place even after country's two Prime Ministers were assassinated, felt the Bihar's happy zoologists whoever were worried over degradation of riverine ecosystem. In the MoEF's placid airconditioned ambience, wildlife mandarins are all gaga about Sinha's arduously carried-out successful mission. Habituated mostly in (mis)managing wildlife in real situations, the MoEF bureaucrats are feeling good about how the scientist's pulling them off-shore from midstream of flaks. For dolphins kept dates with Sinha's ecologist team and not with MoEF's bureaucrats. Gangetic dolphin live like humans. A female breeds a calf in nine months, suckles it like humans, keeps guard against predating alligators, crocks and other stronger animals, but locates its feeds through echoes around, a sensory mechanism of advanced sound system, yet untapped by man. It's this capacity to detect feeds, takes it into the fishermen's nets, which today is made of monofilament. Like humans, dolphins do not have a season for mating. Said Sinha, "On occasions we spotted more than one male having sexual play with a female before actual mating. It's not clear how a male gets success or if female has any role in selecting one out of many males. Partner chosen, at mating time, the frustrated suitors clear the site. Proliferation is not a problem here." Sinha has developed fish scraps as substitute for dolphin oils, which fishermen use to catch "delicious bakus or sukwa and bacha fishes. The scraps are made of peritonial extracts of three fish species, rohu (labeo rohita), katla (katla katle and naini cirrhinus mrigale), which will draw more of these choice fishes than the dolphin oil will do. So, scraps will save dolphins from being poached," explains Sinha

SOURCE : Times of India,Tuesday, September 21, 2004