Mekong Diaries: Day 55 & 56

Day 55 & 56

We take the advice of our hostler and decide to avoid the added cost of a private Camry for the next leg of our journey, this time down the river to Kratie. Instead we book seats on a minibus, quicker and cheaper, or so we think. 12 hours later, having been shunted between several different mini-buses, and somewhere along the way lost completely our senses of humour, we arrive in port town of Kratie, just in time for the sunset over the wide Mekong.

In the early night we walk along the waterfront, and every building is dark. We learn from the owner of our hotel that the authorities in change of the generator that powers the town failed to buy more gasoline yesterday and so today we are all going about by candlelight.

At a fold out card table café on the riverside we bump into a group of western aid workers, and by chance meet Verne Dove, a young Australian woman whose every move sounds like a wind chime due to the forest of dolphin charms, earrings, and bracelets she wears. Verne is one of the reasons we are in Kratie, for it is her work with the population of Irrawaddy dolphins living just north of here in the river that has brought us to film these few remaining animals and find out what might be done to save them.

We rise the next day from one of the best mattresses of the Mekong region and eat quickly before walking a short way to the offices of the WWF offices on the boulevard facing the river. We meet Gordon Condon, a recently appointed head of the project in Kratie, and together with Verne the project’s veterinarian we sit down to work out how best to tell the story of the dolphins. They explain to us the controversy that erupted a few months ago when WWF released a report based on Verne’s work of 3 years finding that the high mortality rate of the dolphins was due to disease, a kind of gangrene that seems to be caused by mercury, and pesticides and other pollutants in the water. Touch Tanna reacted with a public outburst, threatening to throw the project out of the country and arrest Verne, threats that in Cambodia where other unfavourable reports have resulted in these kinds of consequences had to be taken seriously. WWF responded by retracting the report. But the research goes on and when we arrive Gordon explains that concerted efforts are underway to forge a collaborative relationship with the territorial president of the commission.

We walk to the local HQ’s of the Fisheries Department and find a relatively quiet place to do an interview with Gordon. Then with a plan for a dawn boat ride to see the dolphins together for the next day we return to our hotel and quickly set down to compose questions for the afternoon’s interview with a man Verne calls one of the most powerful men in Cambodia, His Excellency Touch Tanna, president of the commission established by the government to protect the dolphins. This done we hire motor scooters and drive along a beautiful riverside road, north to the deep pools in the river next to a village called Kampi.

There in a small car and bus parking ay beside the river we pay an entrance fee at a booth festooned with dolphin paraphernalia. A few minutes after we arrive Tanna drives up and guides us to a row of benches looking out over the river. An elderly man, with a handsome but unfriendly face lined by the sun, he explains that until recently he has been in Viet Nam getting treatment for a chronic condition. We interview him fr a long time about many subjects, but deal with the controversy delicately. Some of his answers seem strange and it is clear that the controversy hurt his political standing greatly. He is particularly fiery when questioned about the likely extinction of the dolphins. He demands that they are increasing and that they are sustainable. WWF told us there were around 70 dolphins left in Cambodia, all living in an 190 stretch of river between here. Tanna stated that there were as many as 170 animals and that they numbers were increasing. It was difficult to comprehend how the science of conservation and the politics of Cambodia would be able to marry to produce policies that could save these creatures.

As we spoke all the while dolphins broke the golden surface of the river below us, round grey forms, making whale-like huffing and puffing sounds. Meanwhile a small but constant parade of tourists climbed down the stairs on the bank and into long tail boats to be ferried out to the deep pools in the middle of the river where the larger numbers of dolphins live.

When we finished our interview we made plans with Tanna for a trip to the villagers working with his commission to protect the dolphins from fishing. He also promised to bring together all of his River Guards, a small force of men commanded by Tanna for the protection and management of the dolphins and their small river environment.

Then we too caught a boat out into the river’s centre, and spent the last few moments of sunlight filming, or trying to catch on film, the dolphins and the tourist boats. Back on land Tanna is waiting for us with the news that if we want to we can go and see a dead dolphins. WE do and in the setting sun we ride back to Kratie and the Fisheries Department where in a small unused room, in a deep freezer the head and body of a medium-sized dolphin is being stored. It is an ignominious resting place for the poor animals, and wasteful too as much of the biological information that can be gleaned by performing a necropsy requires the immediate study of a corpse, and freezing adds to the loss of much data. WWF had told us that the river guards will hide, bury and refuse to share the dolphin carcasses, and here in the freezer we found proof of that claim.