Saving Cambodia's Freshwater Dolphins

In early January, I got to spend some time doing one of the really fun parts of my job: environmental fieldwork. I spent three days in Kratie, a town 5 hours north of Phnom Penh on the Mekong, learning about this elusive little guy, the Irrawaddy dolphin:



The Irrawaddy dolphin is critically endangered and the largest population, thought to be just 80-100 dolphins, exists in the upper reaches of the Mekong in Cambodia.


Folks like these fishermen using an illegal gill net are thought to be largely responsible for the decline of the dolphin. The gill nets are huge and stretch across large stretches of the river, catching everything around. And because they are only checked once or twice a day, dolphins easily get tangled in them and drown.

Kratie was a fun place to be for a few days, with beautiful sunsets over the Mekong...


some neat, if decaying, French colonial architecture...


and a bustling local market.


I had a great time chatting with villagers who live on an island, Koh Pdao, in the middle of the Mekong:





On the way home, there was a stark contrast between beautiful, pristine countryside...


and the rampant illegal logging in the region.