Trapped Indus Dolphin rescued from Taunsa Barrage
Three-foot-long dolphin was trapped in the downstream of Taunsa Barrage
August 06, 2018
MUZAFFARGARH: A trapped Indus Dolphin was rescued on Monday from Taunsa Barrage.
The three-foot-long dolphin was trapped in the downstream of Taunsa Barrage.
It was rescued by fishermen and released in the Indus River.
The Indus Dolphin, which can grow up to 2.5 metres, is one of the world’s rarest mammals, with a population of around 1,000 living scattered along a 1,200-kilometre stretch of the Indus, which rises in the Himalayas and flows out into the Arabian Sea near Karachi.
They are classed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species, which says the population has fallen by more than 50 per cent since 1944. Functionally blind, they use echolocation – a form of natural sonar – to find fish, shrimp and other prey in the muddy river waters.
