The recent death of a critically endangered freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin in southern Thailand’s Songkhla Lake has brought the plight of the waterbody’s tiny remaining population into stark focus. As few as 14 of the dolphins, Orcaella brevirostris, are thought to survive in the lake amid a slew of threats ranging from entanglement in fishing gear and depletion of their fish prey population, to deterioration of their habitat due to pollution and runoff from intensively developed surrounding land. Fishers found the adult dolphin body floating in the lake on Feb. 18. It was the first recorded fatality in three years within the imperiled population. Although authorities performed a necropsy to investigate the cause of death, the coroner’s report was inconclusive, citing no evidence of injuries from fishing nets and very few prey items in the animal’s stomach. “We don’t have any evidence that the death is related to fishery activity,” Thon Thamrongnawasawat, a marine ecologist and lecturer at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, told Mongabay. He added, however, that external bruising indicated there could have been some trauma to the body: “The veterinary assessment said it might have been fighting among the group — sometimes the big males try to eliminate the younger ones.” Cetacean experts say that without swift action to safeguard the remaining animals, Thailand risks losing this small but internationally significant group of dolphins that represent one of only five freshwater populations of the species worldwide. With so few individuals remaining, each fatality pushes the population inexorably closer to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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