The Brahmaputra’s dolphin survey: counting the river’s rarest resident
A monsoon survey of the Gangetic river dolphin is revealing where the Brahmaputra still breathes clean.
The Gangetic river dolphin, the blind cetacean that navigates by sound, survives in the Brahmaputra in numbers that are still being counted — and every count matters.
This monsoon’s survey, using acoustic detectors and trained spotters, is mapping the stretches where the dolphins thrive, feeding the case for protected river reaches.
Fishermen, once rivals of the dolphins, are now the survey’s best spotters.