In the Nancangxi River Basin in Hangzhou's Yuhang District, traces of finless porpoises have been found. As soon as this exciting news broke out, it instantly caused many netizens to discuss.
Mention the porpoise, everyone thinks of its iconic "smile", the porpoise's mouth is short and wide, the head is relatively round, overall, it seems to be a smile, plus it is very close to humans, so people give it a "smile elf" reputation.
After expert testing, the finless porpoise found in Hangzhou is an East Asian finless porpoise, which belongs to China's second-level protected animals. Unlike the Indian Ocean finless porpoise and the Yangtze River finless porpoise, the East Asian finless porpoise mainly lives in estuarine basins where seawater or brackish water alternate. And the little guy seems to have accidentally broken into the freshwater area.
It is conceivable that such water conditions are not suitable for its survival, so that the breathing rate of the water is becoming more and more frequent. Even after people's all-out rescue, they were not saved in the end, and I deeply regret this! At the same time, it also reminds us of the Yangtze River goddess Bai ji porpoise.
The same as the porpoise family, the white dolphin and the finless porpoise still have a big difference, the finless porpoise is a small cetacean belonging to the porpoise family, and the white dolphin belongs to a freshwater cetacean, which is a first-class wild protection animal in China.
As a cetacean unique to China, it last appeared in people's sights in August 2004, when the carcass of the last white-sided dolphin was found in the Nanjing section of the Yangtze River. Since then, no figure of the white dolphin has been found, so in 2007 it was declared functionally extinct, which is also considered to be the first human factor to become extinct.
As a cetacean, the white dolphin has a long history and has survived for 25 million years. Because its abdomen is white, it is called a white dolphin. The body length is generally 2.3 meters, the weight is between 130-320 kg, and the female is larger than the male. This creature is very rare, and it is absolutely impossible for other countries to have it, because it only appears in China, and can only live in the freshwater area of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China.
Unlike the cute and lively porpoise, the white-sided porpoise has an "introverted" personality, preferring to live alone in deep water areas and hardly dealing with people. Seeing its eyes as small as a pen tip, you can know that its vision is not very good, but its hearing is extremely developed, and it basically relies on ultrasound for predation.
Since the late 20th century, due to people's overfishing of the Yangtze River and the pollution of the waters, the ecological environment has been more seriously degraded, and the population of animals and plants in the Yangtze River Basin is constantly decreasing, and even some species are on the verge of extinction. According to statistics, the number of endangered fish species in the Yangtze River Basin has reached 92 species, and nearly 300 endangered species.
In 1980, there were more than 400 white dolphins, but by 1995 it had become 100, and by 2007, not a single one had been seen. So scientists suspected that the species might have disappeared from Earth, eventually declaring the species a "functional extinction."
In recent years, not only the white-and-flagged dolphin has disappeared from people's vision, but also the Yangtze River white sturgeon has also declared functional extinction. The Yangtze River is an important gene bank of freshwater aquatic organisms in China. With the continuous disappearance of organisms, in order to improve the ecological environment, in January 2020, China implemented the "Ten Years of Fishing Ban on the Yangtze River" plan, and now that two years are almost over, what are the changes in the organisms in the Yangtze River?
As a rare species of finless porpoise in the Yangtze River, the original number in China was as much as 3600, but in 2006 there were only 1800 heads, and only 1012 heads were left in 2018. In the past, people could still see porpoises playing and playing in the lake, but now they have not been seen for a long time.
Fortunately, with the implementation of the fishing ban policy, many marine organisms have a rare opportunity to recuperate, and it is precisely during this period that they can "safely" reproduce. Nowadays, we can see more porpoises jumping out of the water on the lake, which fully shows that the ban on fishing has played a very good effect.
In addition to the finless porpoise, another fish called helios has been found in the Yangtze River. Originally, its number was also very rare, and there was almost no trace of them. Now, after giving them the conditions to reproduce, our investigators have found that the number is becoming more and more numerous. Even the critically endangered species, the Dashi fish, has "reappeared in the Nanjing section of the Yangtze River."
After 30 years, China's scientific research team also found a knife fish in the Jiayu River section of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and this discovery is really a miracle.
These re-emerging creatures are only a few that have been discovered so far, and there may be many more that have appeared, but they have not yet been discovered by us.
It is believed that with the passage of time, the speed of species recovery in the Yangtze River will become faster and faster, and we expect to see more species groups. No, the white-sided dolphin, which was declared functionally extinct, has been repeatedly reported to have "reappeared in the jianghu"!
Since the declaration of the functional extinction of the white-sided dolphin, its figure has been repeatedly discovered?
In August 2007, a video of a suspected white-cum dolphin jumping out of the water was filmed in the Xuba Township section of Tongling.
In August 2011, the ferry driver found a suspected white-sided dolphin leaking out of the water at the port of Luoshan in the Honghu River section.
From 2008 to 2014, an old fisherman found traces of baiji dolphins in Tongling, Anhui Province, every year, and according to his many years of experience at sea, it is likely to be baiji dolphins.
One of the most concerned is that in 2018, Jiao Shaowen took two clear photos of suspected white and dolphins in Tongling with a telephoto lens. As can be seen from the photos, it is very similar to the white dolphin, and the color is gray and white. Unfortunately, the decisive dorsal fin was not filmed at the time, and experts are not quite sure that it is a white dolphin.
However, after many revelations, at least the probability of extinction of the white dolphin is not 100%, and it is likely that it is still living silently in the depths of the seabed, but I don't want people to find out.
We respect the way of life of the white dolphin, as long as it is alive and well. And according to the terms of species extinction, the extinction of a species takes 50 years of observation to make a decision. Now that the white-cum-dolphin is not at this point, the possibility of survival is still very large.
Ten years later, let us look forward to the "hundred flowers blooming" in the Yangtze River Basin!