BACOLOD CITY—A team of scientists has found the presence of one of the rarest and most threatened species of dolphins in the coastal waters of Bago City and Pulupandan.
Dr. Louella Dolar, who heads a team of scientists documenting the Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris), made the disclosure on Sunday.
Dolar, a marine biologist from the Tropical Marine Research for Conservation (TMRC) in San Diego, California and a visiting scientist at the Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences (IEMS) of Silliman University in Dumaguete City, told the Inquirer that they have documented the presence of about 30 to 40 Irrawaddy dolphins in Bago and Pulupandan and their study is still ongoing.
She said they started the survey in April 2010, when they first documented the presence of the dolphins and have returned this month to learn more about them.
They wanted to know how big the population was, how far they range and the importance of the Bago estuary to their continued existence, Dolar said.
The project was funded by the National Geographic Conservation Trust and Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong and would continue for another year, she added.
The Bago-Pulupandan area was only the third locality in the Philippines where this dolphin species has been documented to be present, Dolar said.
For a while, it was thought that the Malampaya Sound in Palawan was the only place where this specie was found, she added.
Then in 2005, Dr. Doris Bagarinao and Ellen Flor Doyola-Solis of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (Seafdec) reported that an Irrawaddy dolphin got tangled in a fishing net in the Iloilo Strait.
And, in 2007, a population of the dolphin was found by chance near Guimaras while TMRC and IEMS researchers were conducting their survey on dugong in Iloilo, Dolar said.
The survey conducted in Iloilo and Guimaras in 2009 by TMRC and IEMS led to the discovery of another population in Bago and Pulupandan, Dolar added.
The Irrawaddy dolphins, which are coastal animals that prefer brackish, shallow and protected waters, could only be found in the Indo-Pacific region, she said.
Since the dolphins’ habitat overlaps with areas often used by people, their population has drastically declined in recent years, Dolar explained.
With the exception of the newly discovered population of about 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins in Bangladesh, Irrawaddy dolphins were often found in small patches of populations centered near estuaries and lagoons, she said.
The Irrawaddy dolphin has been declared by the World Conservation Union (IUCN Red List) as “vulnerable,” and five subpopulations, including the Malampaya Sound population comprising of 77 dolphins, have been declared “critically endangered,” Dolar said.
The population size in Iloilo Strait and the Bago-Pulupandan area was also likely to be small and was most likely to be endangered as well, she added.
The research team headed by Dolar is composed of research assistants Edna Sabater of IEMS and Joaquin Villegas, Manuel Eduardo de la Paz, an IEMS graduate student who will be studying the Irrawaddy dolphins of Bago for his master’s thesis, research associate Teri Aquino and Mavic Matillano of the World Wildlife Fund-Philippines, the study leader of the Malampaya Sound Irrawaddy dolphin conservation project.
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