WHERE ARE THE DOLPHINS?
Sightings of the endangered Gangetic dolphin are becoming rare. India’s national aquatic animal is at risk from increased human activities such as dredging and the building of dams in the river
The endangered Gangetic dolphin, India’s national aquatic animal, is at serious risk because of increased activities such as dredging and building of dams
We are in the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary (VGDS), the only sanctuary legally designated for India’s national aquatic animal, the blind, side-swimming, most ancient of all cetaceans: the endangered Gangetic river dolphin, Platanista gangetica gangetica. Tear-shaped diaras rise about a foot or two from the water. Two bright-beaked skimmers perch on one edge; greater adjutant storks forage in the shallows; a row of hard-shelled tent turtles basking in the sun plop back into the river in sudden alarm at the put-put of our boat. At first glance, the lower Ganga in eastern Bihar bears some resemblance to a beautiful, sacred river.
FROM THE SURVEY BOAT
From the lower observation deck of a dolphin survey boat, we seek signs of the trademark arc of soft grey, of a beak-like snout cleaving the surface to breathe, of the gentle curve of the dorsal fin diving back in. With me are researchers Nachiket Kelkar of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and Subhasis Dey of Vikramshila Biodiversity Research and Education Centre (VBREC), who have been working in this area on the ecology of river dolphins and fisheries for over a decade. We’d spotted one dolphin when we had pushed away from the shore, but have seen none since. This is unusual. In the dry season, 70-100 dolphin sightings is par for this short course. Where was India’s national aquatic animal? Why was it not in the sanctuary? Speculations abound in the team. Had they been hunted? Had they moved downstream? Had dredging in the sanctuary disturbed them? There were no answers yet, only alarm and much concern.
THE FISH TOO DISAPPEAR
The VGDS is on paper a protected stretch of river, but in a heavily human-dominated landscape. There are 3,000 fishing families in the area that depend directly on the river, as they have for generations.
Every morning of our time there, we headed to the market to see what fish had come in. That was an indicator of the biodiversity of food fish in the river.
It is 7am on a late summer morning, and we are at a purple-painted stall in Kahalgaon’s fish market. The catch should have come in by this time, the owner of the stall, Chandan, says. Maybe the squall of the previous night meant a bad night for the fishers, and they’d be late. We’d have to wait and see. Chandan’s family has been here for about 200 years. His father, Dashrathji says,“One year, there was so much hilsa, so much hilsa!” His face breaks into a toothy smile at the memory. “It sold for just ₹1 for a kilo, and still no one to buy! This was when I was a young boy.”
These days, hilsa caught in Indian waters rarely weighs a full kilo and sells for around ₹800. The price for choice cuts rises as high as ₹1,500-2,000 in the festival season. The river’s stock of fish has depleted in both biodiversity and abundance, he says. Stocks have plunged 70-90 per cent in the last 30 years. Indeed, the catch never came in that day.
What we saw at the Kahalgaon fish market was no aberration – the story repeated itself the next day, and the next, and the next, upstream and downstream. Massive weighing scales stay dormant, unneeded. An eerie quiet envelops fish markets all along the Ganga. “Ever since the Farakka barrage was built, migratory fish and shrimp are completely finished. They’ve disappeared from our tables and we don’t ever see them anymore.”
Hilsa (Tenualosa ilisha), the queen of fish, the prized meal in any Bengali household, used to once swim up the Ganga, against the monsoon freshet, all the way to Allahabad to spawn. The young ones would then return to the sea, and repeat the spawning cycle come the next monsoon. When India built the barrage at Farakka in West Bengal, this changed. All anadromous, catadromous and potadromous fish stocks – hilsa, tiger shrimps and such – plunged to near zero upstream from the barrage. This was the beginning of the collapse of fisheries in the Ganga.
The barrage definitely is a big culprit of the collapse, but it does not explain the disappearance of non-migratory species. The blame for that lies elsewhere.
NET LOSS
In 1991, the Ganga Mukti Andolan led the effort to free the Ganga from the ‘panidars’ – the feudal waterlords who are the river-equivalent of ‘zamindars’. The abolition of the feudal water-lords was much needed, but the freeing of the Ganga waters from oppressive contracts became a double-edged sword. Now, anyone could fish anywhere. While that seemed a win at first blush, it has proved disastrous for both traditional fishermen and the river ecology. The “free for all” resulted in non-fishermen also taking to fishing, swelling the number of fishers on this region of the Ganga. Earlier, one boat cast one net. Now, with cheap nets available in markets, each boat casts ten nets , and not traditional nets either. The problem with the mosquito net in common use is that the weave is so fine it catches everything – gravid fish, baby fish, yearlings, the lot. Thus, entire generations of fish are killed on a daily basis, rapidly eroding the river’s stock beyond the possibility of replenishment. For part-timers for whom fishing is not the primary business, sustainable fishing practices are not top-of-mind. Traditional fishermen, however, have no land, no alternate means of livelihood. They have depended upon the river for almost 100 per cent of their sustenance. “If we don’t allow the eggs to hatch, if we don’t allow the fingerlings to grow, how can we expect to eat tomorrow?”
ANTHROPOCENE RIVER
In March 2016, the government of India passed the National Waterways Act (NWA), which marks 106 rivers to be engineered into cargo-carrying waterways. The rationale is that shipping is “greener” than road traffic. But, says Kelkar, “There has unfortunately been barely any debate on the ecological and social risks the NWA poses to river biodiversity and to the communities that depend on the river.”
Kelkar has analysed the Bill and clearly called out its implications. Now, as he and I sit by the Ganga watching the sun haemorrhage into the river, we see a dredger silhouetted against the fiery orange shimmer of the river. It scoops up sediments from the river bed and plumes it back into the main channel of the river. This is crucial to maintaining navigability of NW1, given the Ganga’s heavy sediment load – and it is also a potential death knell for aquatic species. Dredging dislodges river sediment, thereby destroying fish breeding grounds, and habitats for endangered aquatic life.
As we travelled along the river, another sinister fallout of dredging comes to the fore. Over the last six months, dredging has become regular in the VGDS causing vast variations in the riverbed and undercurrents. There have been 20 deaths by drowning in Bhagalpur’s Barari Ghat alone – people washed away because the ground beneath their feet was replaced by fast flowing undercurrents.
NO SIGN OF DOLPHINS
The plot thickens with the non-appearance of the dolphins.
The Gangetic dolphin is almost completely blind. Evolving in silty, murky environs for over 30 million years, it has all but lost its eyesight. Its eyes have no lenses, and it can only sense the direction of diffused light. It lives by echolocation; sound is everything to this most ancient of all cetaceans. It navigates, feeds, avoids danger, finds mates, breeds, nurses babies, and lives by echolocation.
What effects will the sound of the dredger, and continuous navigation by large barges and tourist ships have on this creature? Ongoing research by VBREC has predicted local extinctions of Ganges river dolphins from rivers in the Ganga basin that do not have adequate flow. River dolphin hearing of lower echolocation frequencies can be masked by dredging and vessel engine sounds, which might seriously limit their ability to find food and navigate.
Also, the physical upheaval of river sediment caused by dredging appears to be disturbing to river dolphins.
A statistic that heightens the worry over a distinct depression in sightings on our days in the sanctuary: Over 90 per cent of the endangered Gangetic dolphin population overlaps with the proposed National Waterways. Even if the dolphins had to move, where would they go? The dredgers and barges would be almost everywhere.
STRETCHED THIN
Flows in the Ganga have been steadily reducing; this year, the depth sensor tells us, it is at an all-time low. While the monsoons may make it seem like there is a “surplus” of water, it is dry season flows that should be the determining factor in planning waterways and diversions. And dry season flows in most of India’s rivers are dismal. Add to that the inherent hazards of shipping cargo along ecologically invaluable ecosystems. The Ganga’s waters feed and support 600 million people. Misguided engineering has already contributed to disastrous social and ecological outcomes (Farakka being just one case in point); mishaps and more engineering may just be the proverbial straw that breaks this camel’s back. Water in the Ganga this summer is at a premium. There is holy water for cities (that can now be purchased online), water for farmers, water for power. But nothing seems to be left for the lower Ganga floodplains.
No fish. No livelihood. No dolphins. No hope. The social-ecological web here hangs on by a thread stretched precariously thin. The writer is an environmental journalist. This story was made possible by a grant from the Third Pole and Earth Journalism Network
OVER 90 PER CENT OF THE ENDANGERED GANGETIC DOLPHIN POPULATION OVERLAPS WITH THE PROPOSED NATIONAL WATERWAYS. EVEN IF THE DOLPHINS HAD TO MOVE, WHERE WOULD THEY GO? THE DREDGERS AND BARGES WOULD BE ALMOST EVERYWHERE