SHANGHAI, Aug. 30 -- A WHITE-FLAG dolphin has been seen in the Yangtze River in the country's east, just days after a leading Chinese scientist said the mammal was almost certainly extinct.

A resident of Anhui Province spotted a "big white animal" in the river off Tongling on August 19.

And, even better, the man captured the moment on film with a digital camera, said Dr Wang Kexiong, of the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The creature in the footage has been confirmed as a white-flag dolphin, known in Chinese as baiji, Wang said.

"We are very glad to see baiji still exist in the world," Wang said.

Zeng Yujiang, the man who spotted the dolphin, told Xinhua news agency: "I've never seen such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it. It was about 1,000 meters away and jumped out of water several times."

The footage was sent to the Tongling freshwater dolphin nature reserve.

A staff member of the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences happened to be in the reserve at the time and took the footage to the institute based in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, which is well known for baiji research.

The white-flag dolphin, unique to the Yangtze River, is listed as one of the 12 most endangered species in the world. Its population dropped to below 150 in the early 1990s from about 400 a decade earlier.

A team of 25 scientists from China, the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany and Switzerland failed to find any baiji during a 38-day search last year.

Wang Ding, a leading expert on the species from the institute and head of the team, said earlier this month: "This result means the baiji is likely extinct."

Now he said a team of scientists will go to the area in September to look for the dolphin.

August Pfluger, a Swiss economist-turned-naturalist, who helped put together last year's expedition, called the sighting "a big surprise."

"We declared the animal extinct so if there is one left, that would be fantastic," said Pfluger.

But even if one or more baiji are left, Pfluger and Wang both said they still consider the animal "functionally extinct."

Any surviving baiji are unlikely to be able to find each other for breeding in the huge river and are threatened by ship traffic, overfishing and the degradation of their habitat, Pfluger said.

"We don't hold much hope for the future of the baiji," Wang Ding said. "It will be gone for sure pretty soon."

If any baiji are found, scientists will try to capture them and move them to a reserve, he added.

The baiji dates back 20 million years. Chinese called it the "goddess of the Yangtze."