Zeng Yujiang films a "big white animal" at Xuba ferry, Tongling, presumed baiji (2007)

The baiji, Lipotes vexillifer, was the dolphin of the Yangtze. About 400 remained in the early 1980s. The last verified sighting came in 2002, at Tongling. Late in 2006 the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Expedition searched the river for 38 days and found none. In December 2006 the species was declared functionally extinct. The results were published in August 2007. That same month, the river answered back.

19 August 2007. Between 3:10 and 3:20 in the afternoon. Zeng Yujiang stood on the bank at Xuba ferry, on a side channel of the Yangtze near Tongling, in the core of the Tongling Freshwater Dolphin National Nature Reserve. Out in the channel, a big white animal surfaced. It was about 1,000 meters away. It jumped out of the water several times. "I never saw such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it," he told Xinhua.

He kept his digital camera on it for several minutes. The footage caught a second animal too. A finless porpoise, much darker in colour than the white mystery animal. One Chinese-language account says three Tongling residents, Zeng among them, made the recording.

Zeng sent the video to a local television station. It went on to the Tongling Yangtze Cetacean Reserve and to the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan. Xinhua reported a verdict. Dr Wang Kexiong said that, "judged from its appearance and living environment," the animal "was confirmed by the institute to be a white-flag dolphin." "We are very glad to see baiji still exist in the world," he said.

Wang Ding, the species' leading specialist, was more careful. The movement and colour of the animal made a baiji quite likely. But he "could not give a 100 percent confirmation since the video was of poor quality and taken from a distance of about 1000 metres away."

August Pfluger of baiji.org, co-leader of the 2006 expedition, called it "incredibly fantastic news," but said the footage needed checking. Karen Baragona of WWF saw "a last hope that the Baiji may not go the way of the dodo bird."

Others were doubtful. Robert L. Pitman of NOAA said the Chinese scientists who reviewed the tape were "far from certain that it shows a baiji at all." Michael F. Richlen of the University of Hawaii said "the evidence is not conclusive for a positive species identification." Pfluger later concluded: "We have to accept the fact, that the Baiji is functionally extinct."

No one suggested the film was staged. The dispute was about the species. In 2016 National Geographic wrote that "an exciting 2007 sighting eventually turned out to be a finless porpoise." A 2025 NOAA review records Samuel Turvey's view that the animal was likely a Yangtze finless porpoise. Yet one detail lingers. The porpoise in the same film is clearly darker than the white animal. The case for a porpoise does not seem to have addressed it directly.

The institute's confirmation was never formalised. Later reviews treat 2002 as the last confirmed sighting. Even a living baiji, one or a few ageing animals, could not save the species. Hopeful reports followed, near Wuhu in 2016 and around Tongling in 2017, and the 2017 footage was judged most likely a porpoise. Zeng's few minutes of film remain the last widely publicised, filmed "baiji" record.