No one has been able to find Baiji. The futile search continued throughout 2006. Fishers and river people, government officials and even tourists have been watching expectantly, looking for a reassuring sign. No Baiji. Then a quick but inconclusive glimpse on August 19, 2007. A video shot by a local man suggested a white and fleeting shape, perhaps followed by a quick disturbance on the muddy surface of water. Then nothing. More than a year later and still no sign of Baiji.

The last majestic Yangtze River dolphin, the sole representative of the Lipotidae family of cetaceans, is probably extinct. Even if the sighting in 2007 were Baiji, it had no likely mate. And the only river that it and its kin had inhabited for millennia is now too busy with industry, too polluted and too overfished to sustain such a creature. This makes Baiji the first cetacean species to be driven to extinction by humans.

The next cetacean likely to vanish into extinction is Vaquita, a small porpoise in the Gulf of Mexico. Only 150 existed a year ago and they have been dying at an alarming rate in shrimping nets ( New Scientist, Dec. 22-29/07). With little interest in saving this species, biologists expect that within two years Vaquita will be joining Baiji in the dark silence of extinction. This will make two cetacean species that we have wiped out in three years.

Other species have had close calls. "Whalers wiped out the north Atlantic populations of the grey whale in the 17th century, but the species survived elsewhere" (Ibid.). For some species, such as Baiji and Vaquita, there is no "elsewhere".

Fortunately, there is an "elsewhere" – so far – for most other cetaceans. The right whale, once valued for its oil-rich blubber, was hunted to near-extinction in the 1800s. A few of the animals still exist but their numbers are so tenuous that a 10 knot speed limit for freighter traffic has been imposed in a 32km zone off North America's eastern seaboard to ease the likelihood of fatal collisions. Most other whale populations are in a delicate state, although the grey whale has made a successful recovery along the North America's Pacific Coast, thanks to a hunting moratorium and their new status as a tourist attraction.

Tourism wasn't of such economic importance in 1900. In those years, 500 resident humpback whales still populated the Strait of Georgia, and boaters found it almost impossible to travel anywhere on this inland sea without sighting one of these marine giants. Within a few years, however, whalers had put a bloody end to these sightings. Now, an occasional humpback wanders in for feeding. But the resident humpbacks no longer exist. Should they return in any numbers, they would be a welcomed addition to the orcas that tourists flock to see.

Now our treasured local orcas are in distress. "It's been a bad summer for both the northern and southern residents," says Lance Barrett-Lennard, a whale expert from the University of BC. "So we expect more mortalities this coming winter." The southern pod is suffering from a declining birth rate, an unusually high death rate, and is showing signs of starvation – a condition called "peanut head" indicates a fatal loss of body fat. Last week, the US Centre for Whale Research reported that seven adults – including two reproductive females – have vanished. Two calves are also missing (Globe & Mail, Oct. 29/08). Only one calf was born this year. The historic population of about 200 fell to 90 in 2004 and is now at 83. A lack of salmon, particularly chinook, means they are facing a bleak winter for food. The loss of a few more breeding females could send the southern pod of orcas on the slide to extinction.

Could it happen? Dr. Barrett-Lennard says, "I'm watching a population of killer whales die out in front of my eyes in Alaska. A population that is beyond the point of recovery – down to six animals – so it can happen" (Ibid.). He is referring to the AT1 transient whales of Prince William Sound. The group had 22 members before the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. It never recovered from that environmental disaster.

The threat haunting all the local orcas – along with accumulating body toxins from pollution – is a lack of food. While chinooks are their primary prey, a starving orca would presumably eat any salmon: pink, chum, sockeye or coho. But these fish are very seasonal. And their populations, too, are in decline, thanks to inept fisheries management, appalling protection of river and stream habitat, and a woeful failure to adequately regulate salmon farming. Now add global warming to the mix of cascading circumstances that are sending marine ecosystems into disarray and threatening yet another species of cetacean.

The Yangtze River may seem like a long way from the Pacific Northwest. But the two places are brought together by the same problem. Do we really want to submit our local ocean to the ecological abuses the Chinese have inflicted on the Yangtze? Do we really want to allow offshore drilling for gas and oil? Do we really want to permit tanker traffic along this most precious and precarious coast? Do we really want to leave salmon farms in open net-pens? Have we reached the sorry point where we must choose between feeding ourselves or orcas? Have we now so damaged our marine ecosystem that we should question the wisdom of continuing with a commercial fishery for wild salmon?

Maybe we should start thinking of species other than ourselves. A little sacrifice on our part might remind us we live on a planet that must be shared and respected. We might even be reminded of consequences, such as the death of a sick and lonely Baiji somewhere in the muddy and polluted water of the Yangtze.