A couple of years ago I wrote about the extinc­tion of the Baiji — or Yangtze River Dol­phin — and now, as the BBC reports, it looks like another large inhab­it­ant of the Yangtze is on the verge of fol­low­ing it, if it hasn’t already done so.

One of only two extant spe­cies of Pad­dle­fish, the Chinese Pad­dle­fish (Pseph­urus gla­dius,) which, with repor­ted sizes up to 7m long, may also be the world’s largest fresh­wa­ter fish¹ has not been detec­ted at all on a recent sur­vey. The team do admit that it’s quite pos­sible for isol­ated indi­vidu­als to have escaped detec­tion due to the sheer size of the area sur­veyed, but point out that the envir­on­ment can no longer sup­port a viable breed­ing pop­u­la­tion, and that unless some spe­ci­mens can be caught in time to begin a cap­tive con­ser­va­tion pro­gramme the spe­cies is doomed.

It’s depress­ing to be writ­ing about the extinc­tion of another large, eco­lo­gic­ally import­ant spe­cies so soon after the Baiji — doubly so since it was nat­ive to the same river sys­tem — and it’s no com­fort at all to know that there will have been plenty of other, less-​​visible (but no less tra­gic) extinc­tions in the same period, or that this is unlikely to be the last.

1. it is cur­rently not clear — and now may never be — whether the animal spends it’s entire life in fresh water [↩]

Hat tip to John Lynch over at A Simple Prop for the link.

Also, if The End of the Line didn’t con­vince you, John has dis­covered another reason not to des­troy the world’s fish pop­u­la­tion: if there are no fish to eat, the Otters will have to find some­thing else to eat: Human Flesh!

Don’t look so cha­r­is­mic now, do they?

The Gob­lin Shark is a fas­cin­at­ing — not to men­tion slightly freaky-​​looking — creature, and this is a great video of one doing it’s thing, includ­ing some good foot­age of it’s sig­na­ture pro­trus­ible jaw. Take a look after the fold.

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