World Wildlife Fund

Day Five: Mekong River Dolphins
The next morning, we head out on to the river to count the dolphins in two pools, Kampi, which is a regular tourist draw and Chroy Banteay, which doesn't allow tourist boats. It is hot, hot, hot on the river. We are on a long-tail boat, supposedly counting dolphins. In reality, all we can see are occasional silver blips rising out of the shimmering water. They are suspiciously synchronized. Just when you spot two on the right side of the boat, you catch another from the corner of your eye on the left side of the boat. When you whirl back to the right, the waters have closed over the tails of the first two.

The dolphins usually emerge out of the river in twos and threes, just a heartbeat apart from each other. They are silverfish grey all over. Unlike other dolphins, they have a much more rounded head with no beak. Instead, they have a large smile that curve across their face and large button eyes right next to their mouth. Each time they come up for air, you can hear a wet snort of spray and it is impossible to restrain the "oohs and aahs". There is something so wonderful about seeing them in the wild. Richard and San, his program officer, (both of whom can distinguish among them) say that there are 11 individuals in this pod.

During lunch, we sober down. These dolphins we saw are some of the last remaining few of the Mekong dolphins. Meanwhile, the threats seem insurmountable; mining, pollution, over-fishing and large hydropower dams. In response, WWF's Living Mekong Program, which works on freshwater conservation, has taken a two pronged approach -- one is the Mekong dolphin project itself, and the others involves coming up with alternative scenarios for hydropower development. It promotes more widespread demand side management, energy efficiency and energy conservation to reduce the rapid escalation of energy demand. WWF wants to support increased use of alternative energies such as biomass wind and solar power to meet that demand as much as possible. But, additional hydropower development is inevitable in this region and so, we work with the major players in the region such as the Mekong River Commission and the Asian Development Bank to try and ensure that this development takes place with the least social and environmental impacts possible.