Nazir Mirani, 47, is the third generation of a humble family committed to saving Pakistan's blind dolphins, an endangered species swimming against a tide of man-made hazards."I treat them as my children and do everything whenever a dolphin is trapped in shallow waters," said Mirani, once a fisherman and now among a handful of people officially assigned to protect the dolphins.
"No one can know them as meticulously as me. I was born in a boat and have been living with these fish ever since," said the lanky Mirani, his complexion darkened by years under the burning sun and his chest puffed up with pride.
"Look at my eyes," he said. "Aren't they shaped like the fish?"
Indus dolphins -- Platanista gangetica minor or "bulhan" in the local Sindhi language -- are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union.
According to local folklore, a lactating woman once refused to give milk to a saint, who cursed her and pushed her into the Indus. The woman turned into a dolphin and the freshwater species was born.
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