A macabre dolphin mystery amid severe Amazon drought

Travel documentaries that venture to northern Brazil never fail to feature the boto-cor-de-rosa, the pink river dolphin of the Amazon basin, the world’s largest freshwater dolphin species and one which is surrounded in lore and legend by local communities. Tourists who visit Brazil’s North are always desperate to catch a glimpse of these truly stunning and unique mammals.

Local folk tales say that, on the night of a full moon, the pink river dolphins come ashore and transform into handsome, seductive human men. They disguise themselves in white suits and shoes, along with a top hat to conceal the blowholes atop their heads.

These handsome dolphins then captivate and impregnate local women, before abandoning them and returning to the river. Even today in Brazil’s North, pregnancies out of wedlock are often blamed on the boto-cor-de-rosa, and the sons and daughters in question become the “dolphin’s children.”

But the Amazon’s pink river dolphins have made the news in recent weeks, and not for their beauty or cultural significance.

On the Lago Tefé, a wide stretch of the Tefé River in the center of Amazonas state, more than 100 river dolphins have turned up dead amid what risks being the most severe drought in the region’s history.

While the levels of the region’s rivers always fall sharply in the middle portion of the year due to decreased rainfall, exceedingly high temperatures and drastically low precipitation have led to a situation of panic — with the risk of river levels dropping even lower than the all-time record set in 2010.

Forty of the 62 municipalities in Amazonas state are currently in a state of full emergency, while another 20 are on a state of high alert.

What happened to the dolphins?

Earlier this year, there were an estimated 800 to 900 pink...