The Brahmaputra’s dolphin survey: counting the river’s rarest resident

The Gangetic river dolphin, the blind cetacean that navigates by sound, survives in the Brahmaputra in numbers that are still being counted — and every count matters.

This monsoon’s survey, using acoustic detectors and trained spotters, is mapping the stretches where the dolphins thrive, feeding the case for protected river reaches.

Fishermen, once rivals of the dolphins, are now the survey’s best spotters.