Shakunt Pandey

The dolphins are a friendly, playful, intelligent creature. The antics of dolphins in seas and oceans, and particularly in dolphinarium amazes us to no end. On 18 March 2025, when NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore returned to Earth after almost nine months in space, they were greeted first of all by a playful pod of dolphins in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida, where their SpaceX Dragon capsule had landed! These cuddly and friendly dolphins not only live in seas and oceans, but some species thrive in freshwater or brackish environments too. Our very own, The Ganges River Dolphin (Platanista gangetica gangetica) or the Blind River Dolphin is one among them and is very special as it is the only freshwater cetacean found in the Indian Subcontinent in the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Meghna, and Karnaphuli-Sangu River systems in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. It is the National Aquatic Animal of India, having been conferred the title on 5 October 2009. It also happens to be the State Aquatic Animal of the state of Assam. Our country’s only Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary, the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary, located in Bhagalpur district of Bihar and spread between the 60 km stretch of the Ganges from Sultanganj to Khalgaon, was established in the year 1991. It is deemed to be the first concrete step towards…read more on NOPR