Saving the Ganges River Dolphin

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2012

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Discovery this week goes in search of the Gangetic River Dolphin, an extraordinary creature which inhabits the muddy waters of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers.

Not long ago, the dolphin was a common sight for people along these mighty water ways, but now it's one of the world's rarest freshwater mammals.

Andrew Luck-Baker joins Indian biologists studying the dolphins and the threats to them along the stretch of the Brahmaputra in the state of Assam.

In a joint project between Aaranyak, an Indian conservation organisation, and the Zoological Society of London, the scientists are also mobilising local communities to protect this special animal and the ecosystem they share with it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
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0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. Thank you for
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0:33.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use,
0:37.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. We're on a river floating through the countryside of Assam in northeast India, the location for this week's discovery from the BBC.
0:55.0	I'm Andrew Luckbaker and I visited the area to hear about efforts to save one of the
1:02.1	world's most endangered freshwater mammals.
1:05.0	A fisherman throws his castnet from the bank into this tributary of the mighty Brahma Putra.
1:12.0	The net lands within meters of one of the animals I've come to find.
1:17.0	The Ganges River Dolphin, feeding where two branches of the river meet.
1:23.0	Yeah, there are dolphins.
1:25.0	Just where these two currents are actually muzzing.
1:29.0	There are dolphins.
1:30.0	The dolphins trying to feed, so it's just foragingaging along and it just literally just broke the water very quickly to come up for breath.
1:37.0	There's only very quick.
1:40.0	There another one, yeah, tail slapping. Yeah. So I think four or five will be here in and around this area.
	...

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