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Mongabay
Mongabay
The last 80 Irrawaddy dolphins that inhabit the Mahakam River in Indonesian Borneo lead precarious lives. Their forays to find fish are frequently thwarted, sometimes fatally so, by a series of near-invisible gillnets that hang passively in the water column to ensnare fish. More than two-thirds of recorded river dolphin deaths in the Mahakam are due to entanglement in these fishing nets. At an average of four deaths per year, experts say the losses are unsustainable for this critically endangered population of Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris). Each dolphin drowned in a net nudges the…