The Yangtze finless porpoise has no fin on its back and no beak on its face — just a rounded grey head and a mouth that curves up into a permanent smile.Source 1Source 2
Locals call it the smiling river dolphin.Source 2
It is the world's only freshwater porpoise, navigating the murk of the Yangtze by ultrasonic pulses.Source 2
It once shared the river with the baiji dolphin. The baiji was last seen in 2002, and declared functionally extinct within the decade.Source 3
The porpoise nearly followed: from about 2,700 in the early 1990s to barely a thousand.Source 4
The river itself was the problem — gillnets, ship noise drowning its sonar, sand mining, dams cutting the lakes away.Source 5Source 4
Then China acted at river scale: a ten-year ban on all fishing across the Yangtze system, begun in 2021.Source 3
The 2022 census found 1,249 — the first increase since records began.Source 5
In quiet oxbow reserves like Tian'ezhou, more than 150 porpoises now live and breed — roughly ten calves a year.Source 4
To witness the smiling porpoise is to ask that a river 400 million people depend on stay alive enough for it.Source 5
