A RESEARCH team comprising conservationist specialists from the government and an international organisation has begun a two-week survey of the Ayeyarwaddy dolphin population.

The team of about 10 members, from the Fisheries Department and the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, began the survey on November 14.

The survey was being conducted in the upper reaches of the Ayeyarwaddy River, between Mandalay and Singu, where a proposed 70 kilometre-protected area is located.

The survey has been funded by the WCS and co-organised by the Fisheries Department.

A member of the team, U Tint Tun, an associate marine biologist with the society’s Ayeyarwaddy dolphin conservation project, said it was the fourth consecutive yearly survey and aimed to confirm the dolphin population in the proposed protected area and educate local people on conservation.

“Most of them already know about conservation because of series of campaigns in the last four years,” he said.

The team will also distribute posters and pamphlets to villagers living in the proposed protected area, which is in the last stage of the approval process.
A survey conducted in December 2004 estimated the dolphin population of Ayeyarwaddy river at about 70, of which most were in the proposed protected area.

U Tint Tun said the team will also finalise the demarcation of the area.

He said it was important to establish the protected area. He said that while fishermen did not catch the mammals, the declaration of the protected area would help to reduce accidental deaths from entanglement in fishing nets, the main threat to the dolphins.

Concern about a gradual decline in the dolphin population throughout the region resulted in the mammals being given the highest level of protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in October 2004.

U Tint Tun has also conducted a three-week survey on accidental deaths of whales and dolphins from entanglement in fishing nets around Myeik, in Tanintharyi Division.

The survey, during October, was also funded by the WCS. U Tint Tun said local fisheries officials and lecturers and students at Myeik University assisted with the survey.

He said interviews with fishermen and local villagers indicated that there were few accidental deaths of the mammals in the region, which is believed to have a big dolphin population.

“According to my survey, it is a good place for the animals,” he said.

U Tint Tun said local people did not kill or catch whales or dolphins because they believed they were supernatural creatures.

However, he urged local people to keep records of sightings of the animals, especially whales.

“Such records are very valuable for researchers because we have little information on the different species and their populations,” U Tint Tun said.