By noon on Friday, local authorities in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, released an announcement referring to a possible criminal case involving the selling of a protected species. The case may not have been brought to light, had it not been for uproar on social media, with an online campaign for justice launched on Thursday afternoon.

The creature in the photos, as some netizens pointed out, is highly likely to be a Chinese white dolphin, a species regarded as endangered as the giant panda by China's wildlife conservation body. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, there are less than 2,500 Chinese white dolphins left in the wild.

According to the three men, they found the creature floating in the water while they were fishing, and discovered it was a dead dolphin-like animal which local fishermen commonly dub “white taboo,” with such a creature considered an unlucky omen. The three took it back to shore to sell on, and ate the parts they could not sell.