Ocean Sentry
(From news.bbc.co.uk) Sun Mao leans forward in the boat, shades his eyes with his hand, and squints across the wide expanse of the Mekong River where it twists through the town of Kratie.
He is looking for one of the world”s rarest mammals – the Mekong Irrawaddy dolphin. Little effort was needed to see them in their dozens. Now, scientists say, there are less than 100 remaining.
“This is the last place for these dolphins in the world,” he says over the clatter of the boat’s outboard engine.
“We have to conserve and keep them alive in this river for our next generation.”
A government-enforced ban on the use of gill nets – nets set vertically in the water so that fish swim into them and are entangled in the mesh – has cut down the number of dolphins accidentally caught by fishermen.
