RIO DE JANEIRO – The bright pink color gives them a striking appearance in the muddy jungle waters. That Amazon river dolphins are also gentle and curious makes them easy targets for nets and harpoons as they swim fearlessly up to fishing boats.
Now, their carcasses are showing up in record numbers on riverbanks, their flesh torn away for fishing bait, causing researchers to warn of a growing threat to a species that has already disappeared in other parts of the world.
The population of the river dolphins will collapse if these fishermen are not stopped from killing them, said Vera da Silva, the top aquatic mammals expert at the government's Institute of Amazonian Research. We've been studying an area of 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) for 17 years, and of late the population is dropping 7 percent each year.
That translates to about 1,500 dolphins killed annually in the part of the Mamiraua Reserve of the western Amazon where da Silva studies the mammals.
Story continues here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100710/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_brazil_amazon_dolphins_slaughtered
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Poor dolphins. Especially the part that said That Amazon river dolphins are also gentle and curious makes them easy targets. They just want to come say hi and are murdered. Its sad that a species is going extinct over bait. They can use anything for fishing bait.
I didn't even know there were pink dolphins nor did I know that dolphins swam in rivers.
