A rare, nearly blind white dolphin that survived for millions of years is effectively extinct, an international expedition declared Wednesday after ending a fruitless six-week search of its 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 waters of eastern China, the expedition said.

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Randall Reeves, chairman of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union’s Cetacean Specialist Group, who took part in the Yangtze mission, said expedition participants were surprised at how quickly the dolphins disappeared.

To read the rest of Charles Hutzler’s Associated Press dispatch, see here. There is also a video clip there at the yahoo news site.

Of course, cryptozoologically speaking, giving up after six-weeks seems rather early. I guess cryptozoologists will have to keep looking.