Whale watching

On conservation efforts in China, a cetacean expert has this to say: "In China, the monitoring authorities, fisheries, police and environmental protection agencies have their own area of responsibility. There is no coordinated effort. When a situation occurs, no individual agency is able or willing to tackle the problem ... nothing much gets done in the end."

In order to prevent the finless porpoise from being the next Baiji, experts in China have proposed a number of conservation measures. One of these, proposed by Wang Kexiong, is a whale-watching program that would allow tourists to get up close and personal to the 400 finless porpoises in Poyang Lake, where most of the porpoises are found today.

An eco-tourism model could educate the public on the importance of conserving the finless porpoise, and also create financial incentives for local communities to protect the ecosystem.

Wang got the idea from a report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which outlined the economic and conservation benefits gained from over 10 million whale watchers each year.

The whale-watching industry has grown rapidly in the last 10 years, generating revenues of over US$500 million every year in the United States alone. Whale watching also plays an important part in the Australian tourism industry - in 2005, more than 1.6 million tourists participated in whale watching activities, contributing US$270 million to the Australian economy.

South Korea has also launched a whale-watching program. In Taiwan, although whale watching is relatively new, the industry has attracted thousands of tourists, and the number of tourist boats is increasing every year.

However, several issues need to be addressed before a whale-watching program can be implemented.

Poyang Lake would first need a major overhaul. Today, there are too many construction projects in the lake, such as sand excavation, bridge and road construction, which have a great impact on the porpoise.

The lake is also heavily polluted. Passenger boats from the Yangtze River used to obtain their drinking water from the lake, but now construction workers in the lake have to bring their own drinking water.

The area between Poyang Lake and the Yangtze River used to be where most finless porpoises were found. However, the Lake Poyang Highway Bridge and Tongjiu Railway Bridge have restricted porpoise movement between the river and the lake.

To the porpoises' sonar, the densely packed pillars supporting the railway bridge sound like an impenetrable wall, while the din from vehicles above have created much noise pollution that masks the porpoises' echoes.

If the porpoise population was segregated between the lake and the river, this would reduce the gene pool, leaving them more prone to extinction in the event of drastic environmental changes.

Wang has also proposed setting up a nature reserve in Poyang Lake to support a whale-watching program. It is only with a holistic consideration of environmental and human factors that we can stop the porpoise from going the way of the Baiji. This could well be the only way out for the Yangtze finless porpoise.