Bye Bye Baiji

If this story doesn't totally depress you then I fear you may not be human:

"From AP via China Environmental News Digest:

A rare, nearly blind white dolphin that survived for millions of years is effectively extinct, an international expedition declared after ending a fruitless six-week search of the mammal's Yangtze River habitat.

The baiji would be the first large aquatic mammal driven to extinction since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s. For the baiji, the culprit was a degraded habitat -- busy ship traffic, which confounds the sonar the dolphin uses to find food, and overfishing and pollution in the Yangtze, the expedition said on Wednesday."

Happy New Year indeed!