Habitats vanishing

Sanniang Bay is squeezed between Beihai city in the southeast and Qinzhou Bay in the west, the latter of which is now a tax-free zone that is being built into a deep-water port, a manufacturing base for machinery, electronics, textile, construction materials and a logistics center for trading in machinery, high-quality paper, petroleum, edible oil and alloy and chemical products.

A fisherman steers a boat carrying travelers looking to get a glimpse of the Chinese white dophins into the shallows of Sanniang Bay in Qinzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. The bay has become one of the area's biggest tourist attractions thanks to the rare sea mammals.

"Development is the priority not only in China but also in the whole Southeast Asia and no force can pull it back," said professor Pan. "What I'm working on now is to make sure Chinese white dolphins and their natural habitat will be conserved along with the industrialization."

The Qinzhou government has also vowed to ensure a win-win outcome for both the economy and the rare marine mammals. On Aug 17, Mayor Xiao Yingzi invited Pan and his team to join her on a special tour of Sanniang Bay to choose the site of a new center for research on the Chinese white dolphin.

During the tour and at the dinner party that followed, Xiao repeatedly assured Pan of the city's resolve to protect the dolphins and their sea habitat as Qinzhou gallops into modernization. However, both involve huge challenges.

The number of Chinese white dolphins in the Pearl River Delta, Xiamen harbor and off the southwestern coast of Taiwan has dwindled in the past few decades.

At one time, as many as 20 populations were thought to exist but "only five populations are known to remain today in coastal Chinese waters", according to Lindsay Porter, a marine biologist with the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University in Scotland. "The information we have shows each population has problems that are currently not fully understood."

The five populations are isolated from each other because the distance in between is too far for them to converge.

"The habitat is becoming increasingly degraded and there seems little chance for all populations' long-term future unless effective conservation action occurs now," said Porter, who studied the Chinese white dolphin for several years in Hong Kong with support from the World Wildlife Fund.

At the 58th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 2006, Pan, Porter and other researchers called attention to the imminent danger faced by the Chinese white dolphin. They pointed out that shipping and the development of the coastal economy have adversely impacted dolphins in the Pearl River estuary and Xiamen harbor, even causing deaths.

In Hong Kong, for instance, on average one white dolphin gets stranded every month, according to a paper presented to the IWC by a team of scientists led by Pan. Meanwhile, other studies showed the number of marine mammals in Xiamen harbor almost halved between 1994 and 2004.

In April this year, Lee Pei-fen, director of Taiwan University's institute of ecology and evolutionary biology, was quoted by the island's media as saying there are probably fewer than 100 Chinese white dolphins now living off the province's coast.

"Of all known populations, the one that resides in Sanniang Bay appears least effected by anthropogenic activities," reads the scientists' paper to the IWC.

However, the experts did raise concerns over the city's development plan.

Sanniang Bay was open as a tourist destination in early 2004 and asphalt roads already connected the former fishing village with major cities in Guangxi. Qinzhou had also started work on building a paper mill and a huge oil refinery.

The paper recommends the authorities ensure "all measures are put in place to prevent the environment, and the species that dwell within, from being detrimentally impacted", and to promote the marine mammal "as a flagship species for the conservation efforts of Sanniang Bay habitat."

Four years after that meeting, the entire Qinzhou Bay area is a construction site, with the oil refinery and paper mill in their second phase of expansion.