Dinner with an amazing team and plans for the future

On one of my last nights in Bhaglapur, I invited the research team to have dinner with me. It was a chance to thank them for their incredible hospitality and for their openness and willingness to share their story with me and with you. These people and all the people I got the chance to meet and interview on this journey to me are hero’s. Without them…there simply would not be hope for the continued existence of this species. I feel honored and incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to meet all of them.

 

Dinner with research team in Bhaglapur, India (Photo: JLewis, TDRF)

I cannot wait to share the whole story with you now that the shooting is complete. We promise to keep you all posted as it is produced. 

As an organization, in addition to the film we are continuing other lines of work to help do what we can to help preserve this species. We are now working with Dr. Choudhary to organize a conference where all of the researchers in the film (plus many more that we did not follow) can get together and more effectively strategize as a large team to do all that can be done towards preservation of the Ganges river dolphin. We also continue to provide advice and guidance to the students in Nepal (and have offered to do the same for everyone else in the film, and others that we met along the way). And finally, we are now planning to go back later this year to make a second film, focusing more heavily on the complex issue in Bihar, between the dolphins, the fishermen and the men that control the fishermen.  We plan to have a trailer to use to help raise funds for this next trip completed this spring and will also share that with you.

To keep up with our work you can follow us at multiple locations. We post regularly via twitter (https://twitter.com/TropicalDolph), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/TropicalDolphinResearchFoundation) and our website (www.tropicaldolphin.org). 

You can also help support our work in many ways 1) you can share information about the film through social media, 2) you can volunteer to work with our organization (just contact me, Jennifer Lewis at jlewis@tropicaldolphin.org) and 3) you can support us financially through donation (we have a secure paypal link on the top of all of our web pages: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=FCzR1tPTzR0zytyOE0xSg2nHIl9FZNUNa2-JsAf5dG4VeEU5CNUIPtilu3m&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f8e263663d3faee8d7ff5e1e81f2ed97dd1e90bd72966c40c ).

I leave you with a final shot of the Ganges river and the young fishermen as we come back at sunset after interviews. I hope that through this introductory glimpse of the story we are trying to tell, we have inspired you to want to learn more about this species and the people who work tirelessly to prevent it from extinction. And that you will support our efforts to tell this story.

Young fishermen move back towards the shore of the Ganges river, Bihar, India (Photo: JLewis, TDRF)