The Amazon's pink river dolphin population is in freefall

The colonisation of botos, stream dolphins recovered successful the Brazilian Amazon, is declining owed to sportfishing with gill nets and is predicted to autumn by astatine slightest 95 per cent successful little than 50 years

Life 12 November 2021

By Jake Buehler

An Amazon stream dolphin, besides known arsenic a boto, successful Rio Negro, Brazil

Sylvain Cordier/Nature Picture Library/Alamy

Strange, pink, small-eyed freshwater dolphins glide done today’s turbid waters of the Amazon River basin. But they are speedily approaching extinction.

The Amazon stream dolphin, oregon “boto” (Inia geoffrensis) is 1 of the fewer remaining dolphins connected the satellite that are restricted to freshwater, with 2 different superficially akin taxon persisting successful South Asia.

Anthony Martin astatine the University of Dundee successful Scotland and his colleagues person spent much than 2 decades studying the botos astir …