Yangtze finless porpoise in Yangtze River, China 2006
Zhao Xiujiang, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Zhao Xiujiang, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Wang Ding, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides asiaeorientalis) is endemic to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, China. It is the only freshwater population of porpoises in the world and is currently listed as Endangered by IUCN. In November and December 2006, we used two boats and line transect methods to survey the entire current range of the population, except for two lakes (Poyang and Dongting). When on-effort, one boat surveyed 3,100 km with 240 sightings and a mean group size of 1.87 resulting in 0.077 sightings/km, while the other boat surveyed 3,065 km with 198 sightings and a mean group size of 2.05 resulting in 0.065 sightings/km.

The purpose of this study was to search for baiji and evaluate the status of Yangtze finless porpoise.

Baiji was announced to be likely extinct after this range-wide survey since not a single baiji was found during this survey (Turvey et al. 2007).

Zhao, X.J., J. Barlow, B.L. Taylor, R.L. Pitman, K.X. Wang, Z. Wei, B.S. Stewart, S.T. Turvey, T. Akamatsu, R.R. Reeves and D. Wang. 2008. Abundance and conservation status of the Yangtze finless porpoise in the Yangtze River, China. Biological Conservation. 141(12): 3006-3018

Turvey, S.T., R.L. Pitman, B.L. Taylor, J. Barlow, T. Akamatsu, L.A. Barrett, X.J. Zhao, R.R. Reeves, B.S. Stewart, K.X. Wang, Z. Wei, X.F. Zhang, L.T. Pusser, M. Richlen, J.R. Brandon and D. Wang. 2007. First human-caused extinction of a cetacean species?. Biology Letters. 3(5): 537-540

Overview

Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downlodable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission unless otherwise noteded below.

This section explains attributes included in the original dataset. OBIS-SEAMAP restricts the attributes available to the public to date/time, lat/lon and species names/counts only. Should you need other attributes described here, you are encouraged to contact the data provider.

Attributes in dataset provided

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid
boat	Name of the boat
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
obs_count	Group size
obs_date	Date
obs_time	Time. No second part provided
sp_tsn	ITIS taxonomic serial number. This field added by OBIS-SEAMAP