With a population that has shrunk to become even smaller than that of the endangered giant panda, protecting the Yangtze finless porpoise is an urgent task for Chinese scientists and fishery administrators.
In March 2015, eight Yangtze finless porpoises arrived in their new home, around 500 kilometers away from where they grew up.
Compared with the jam-packed Yangtze River, dubbed the "golden water route" because of the huge volume of trade that moves up and down Asia's longest river, the porpoises' new home is expected to be the "ark" that will save the critically endangered species.
This relocation program may be the last chance to save the species from extinction. Their new home was once part of the Yangtze, before the river shifted its route toward the sea. Administered by the Ministry of Agriculture, several institutions that specialize in porpoise protection and research have joined the fishery administration to move the water mammals, thepaper.cn reported.
Yangtze finless porpoises are on the brink of extinction. A study conducted by the China Academy of Sciences (CAS)' Institute of Hydrobiology found there were only 1,040 Yangtze porpoises still alive in 2012, less than 60 percent of the giant panda population. There may be none left in as few as five years. This will be a huge blow to the eco-system of the Yangtze, sometimes called China's Amazon due to the wealth of biodiversity it once had. A species native and unique to the river, Yangtze finless porpoises are at the top of the river's food chain and their fate reflects the health of the whole river.
"The (now probably extinct) baiji dolphins have left us, now the finless porpoises may be next," CAS expert Wang Ding said. "Human beings may follow them."
Bye-bye baiji
Nineteen ships lined up on the shore to search for the finless porpoises, when suddenly the lead-gray animals surfaced near the far bank. The flagship directed others to approach the animals and surround them.
The finless porpoises live in the Yangtze and two of China's largest lakes - the Dongting and Poyang - which are both linked to the river. After spotting them when they surface to breathe, the researchers drive them into the shallows while using echolocation to track them.
The plan is to move the porpoises to Tian'ezhou, or Swan Island, a State-level nature reserve dedicated to protecting the river's porpoises. It was established in 1990 to save the Yangtze's baiji dolphins. However, only one baiji was ever moved there and now the species is considered functionally extinct.
Gao Daobin, former deputy director of the Swan Island reserve, led the program to relocate the baiji. "We found several baiji, but the local government wouldn't let us relocate them and said they would protect them. We could only relocate one baiji that we found elsewhere, and it ended up dying in the nature reserve alone," he said.
Wang Sheng, a researcher at the CAS Institute of Hydrobiology, often reflects on his experiences with the baiji. In the summer of 2006, he was part of a multinational group of researchers that looked for the few remaining baiji. They spent more than a month traveling more than 3,000 kilometers on the Yangtze between Yichang, Central China's Hubei Province and Shanghai. Their efforts were in vain and Wang, who had studied whales for two decades, admitted that the team's search was fruitless to the media.
In 2007, researchers declared that the baiji was probably extinct.
It's extremely rare for two types of porpoises or dolphins to live in the same river. Aside from the Yangtze, only the Amazon has also been home to two kinds of dolphins.
Scientists believe that the number of baiji began to plunge after the 1950s as human activities on the river increased. By the end of the 1990's, researchers estimated that there were only a few dozen baiji left in the river.
