Blind dolphin tagged with satellite transmitter

KARACHI:

For the first time in history, one of Sindh's Indus River blind dolphins has been tagged with a satellite transmitter to monitor its lifecycle.

On Tuesday, a team rescued the stranded dolphin, sighted couple of months ago in a water canal near Naudero, a town of Larkana district. The operation took almost five hours.

After rescuing the freshwater dolphin, the team, already exhausted due to unexpected challenges, re-inhabited the mammal to Sukkur, some 83 km from where it was found.

"It was rather difficult and more risky to reach the destination without doing any harm to it [the dolphin]," revealed Mir Akhtar Talpur, a senior official of the Sindh Wildlife Department (SWD).

Talpur, who leads the dolphin rescue operation, has safely rescued four dolphins since the exercise started in January.

His team needs to remains steadfast till all 23 remaining dolphins are returned successfully to the wild.

Read More: Over two dozen blind dolphins stranded

Talpur was witness to the first radio transmitter tagging about a decade ago and was confident that further information could be retrieved through the device.

The satellite transmitter was tagged onto the dorsal fin of an Indus dolphin, with the help of a WWF-International team, before the dolphin was released back to its natural habitat.

Sharing details, SWD provincial Conservator Javed Ahmed Mahar told The Express Tribune that this was the first dolphin of its kind to be tagged. "We will learn more about this mysterious animal of the wild."

He said that the officials of WWF-International and SWD will be able to monitor the overall movement of the dolphin. It was not confirmed by officials, but sources explained that one more will be tagged next week. Mahar said that his department was already planning to tag all rescued dolphin with transmitters in future.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2022.