There are many freshwater fish protected in the Yangtze River, do you know which ones? Anchovies, knifefish and sturgeon that have long lived in the Yangtze River Basin are all nationally protected fish.
Sturgeon with a long nose
If you catch this kind of "bottom-of-the-prison fish", many people should take pictures and release them, or contact the local fishery administration for protection.
But after an angler caught a sturgeon and released it, the expert said that he should take it home. It turned out that what he caught was actually a sturgeon, which was not within the scope of mainland protection.
What kind of fish is the Western Sturgeon? Why do you have to take it home or dispose of it?
Why does the Yangtze River have such a western sturgeon? What are the protected sturgeon?
Next, let's take a look at it, the Yangtze River has found the Western Miscellaneous Sturgeon many times, and it is not allowed to be released after being captured.
Caught western sturgeon
Anglers release sturgeon
More than a year has passed since the ten-year ban on fishing on the Yangtze River, and many areas have implemented a total "fishing ban", but there are still some areas that can carry out recreational fishing under the "one person, one line and one rod" regulation.
In 2021, Mr. Zhou, who lives in Hubei Province, came to the Han River to fish in his spare time and caught a sturgeon.
As a tributary of the Yangtze River, the Han River is home to a large number of Yangtze River fish, but due to the large area of the basin and the rapid flow, it is rare to catch fish.
The waters of the Han River are very turbulent
So Mr. Zhou and his friends just regard fishing as an interest to pass the time, and they don't think they can really catch any fish.
As a result, after about 3 hours, the float suddenly sank, and Mr. Zhou thought to himself, this is a big fish, estimated that it may be 10 kilograms.
So it took another 2 hours to catch the big fish ashore.
But after seeing the appearance of the big fish, Mr. Zhou quickly put down the fish hook, which is a protected sturgeon, in order to avoid breaking the law, he quickly recorded the video and released the sturgeon.
Mr. Zhou hurried to release the sturgeon
Because Mr. Zhou's movements are too large, many people have videotaped them on the Internet, but experts say that this is not the Yangtze River sturgeon or Chinese sturgeon that belongs to the Yangtze River waters, but the "Western Miscellaneous Sturgeon".
In addition, in 2018, an angler also caught a juvenile fish of the Western Sturgeon.
The sturgeon weighs only 275 grams, so in order to avoid accidents after the fish is released, it is first kept and then contacted the local fishery authorities.
As a result, when the staff of the fishery administration department came, they found that this was not a protected sturgeon, and they could not even release it at will.
Caught juvenile sturgeon
Western sturgeon is an invasive alien species
What exactly is the western sturgeon, why not protect it, but instead recommend taking it home or disposing of it without pollution?
It turns out that the Western Sturgeon is a hybrid of two species of sturgeon, and neither species comes from the Yangtze River, one is the Siberian sturgeon and the other is the Shi's sturgeon.
Siberian sturgeon
Originally a sturgeon that lived in Russia's Siberian region, Siberian sturgeon was introduced to the mainland in the 1980s and can often be found in places where they flow into the Arctic Ocean.
Siberian sturgeon
This fish is very adaptable and has a strong resistance to disease.
Not only can it survive in the semi-salty seawater, but it can also grow in places of severe cold and heat, and it generally appears in places such as the Irtysh River and the Brento Sea in Xinjiang on the mainland.
This sturgeon is also one of the rarest and oldest sub-cold-water biological fish in the world, and also has a very high status.
Due to their scarcity, wild Siberian sturgeon. It has been internationally listed as an Appendix II species of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and is also included in the National Second Class Aquatic Wildlife Protection List in China.
Sturgeon
The Sturgeon and Siberian Sturgeon are similar in appearance and are the most economically valuable rare fish among continental sturgeon.
They are also highly adaptable to their environment and grow very fast, growing to 1.6 meters long and over 100 kilograms.
It also lives in parts of the basins of Russia and China, including the Songhua River, the Ussuri River and the Heilongjiang River.
Due to the decline in populations, the Sturgeon is also classified as "critically endangered" by the IUCN, and wild populations are also continental Second Class Wild Protected Animals.
Sturgeon
Western sturgeon cannot be released
If these two species of fish are caught alone, they should indeed be released immediately, but the western sturgeon, which is a hybrid of the two, is not within the scope of protection.
They may even affect the survival of other fish species in the basin, after all, it inherits the characteristics and advantages of siberian sturgeon and Sturgeon.
Not only is it fast growing and disease resistant, but it also adapts to a wider range of temperatures.
Because the meat of the Western Sturgeon is also very delicious and has a high edible value, there are also many places in the mainland where the Western Sturgeon is artificially farmed.
Western sturgeon that inherits good habits
In 2013, the mainland has cultivated the fish fingerlings of the western sturgeon in cement ponds, forming a set of ecological and healthy breeding models, and such farms are widely distributed in Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, Jiangxi and other places on the mainland.
However, this kind of western sturgeon must not flow into wild watersheds in large quantities, especially in the Yangtze River basin.
Because as a kind of sturgeon, it is easy to hybridize with the Yangtze River sturgeon and the Chinese sturgeon for the second and third times, if the number increases, it is bound to affect the development of these two major populations.
Chinese sturgeon
Moreover, during the fishing ban, fishing has been banned in many areas, even in some places where fishing can be done within the regulations, there will be a situation where Mr. Zhou cannot distinguish between them and then release them.
In the long run, there may be more and more hybrid sturgeon in the Yangtze River Basin, making the Chinese sturgeon, Yangtze River sturgeon and other fish in the basin lose their living space.
The Western Sturgeon flows into the Yangtze River
So how did these western sturgeon come to the Yangtze River Basin?
There are two main ways, one is to escape from the farm, and the other is to release artificially.
Many people like to release fish
The Western Sturgeon escapes from the wild
Many farms are often looted by torrential rains and floods, and large numbers of captive fish flee into the wild as the water level rises or the farms are destroyed.
The Western Sturgeon is no exception, and it is understood that before Mr. Zhou caught the Western Sturgeon, the Han River Basin suffered a long period of heavy rainfall in the first half of the year.
This caused many rivers to flood, the water level of reservoirs to rise, etc., so the western sturgeon took advantage of the chaos to run to the Han River and opened the stocking mode.
Western sturgeon on the farm
Western sturgeon was artificially released
Another possibility is that they have been artificially released, and the Chinese sturgeon and Yangtze River sturgeon have been artificially farmed, so many people on the mainland like to buy these fish and release them into the wild.
When many people buy it, they may not understand the western sturgeon and mistakenly think that it is also a protective sturgeon, so they buy it and release it.
Therefore, when buying fish and fishing, we must carefully identify whether it is a western sturgeon, and if it is, we must not release it at will.
Farmed Chinese sturgeon
At present, the way we can distinguish is the observation method, first look at its nose, if the nose of the sturgeon is more pointed and upturned, it is very likely to be the Western Sturgeon.
In addition, you can look at its bone plate, the bone plate of the Western Sturgeon is generally inverse growth, so it will be more cutting by hand.
The Yangtze River protects sturgeon
Today there are about 1,000 species of freshwater fish on the mainland, nearly 100 of which are protected by the state.
In addition to the Chinese sturgeon and the Yangtze River sturgeon, there is also a white sturgeon that has lost its tracks.
"Giant panda in the water" white sturgeon
As a fish species that once lived in a similar era to the dinosaurs, the white sturgeon has a history of 150 million years, and is not only one of the largest freshwater fish on the earth, but also an endemic species of the continent.
In Sichuan, there is a proverb "a thousand pounds of wax and ten thousand pounds of elephants, the yellow row is not very large", in which "ten thousand pounds of elephants" refers to the white sturgeon, although there is no real record of the white sturgeon that has reached the weight of 10,000 pounds.
It is not recorded that in the 1950s, a white sturgeon weighing 908 kilograms and a body length of 7.5 meters was captured in Nanjing.
Giant white sturgeon
But at the end of 2019, the international academic journal Holistic Environmental Science published an article pointing out that around 2005-2010, the Yangtze River white sturgeon had become extinct.
Originally, in 2003, mainland experts tracked the white sturgeon for the last time and tried to breed it artificially, but unfortunately it was lost, so even though the mainland now has a mature artificial breeding technology, it has lost the opportunity.
In order to protect the other two major sturgeon in the Yangtze River, if you catch the Western Sturgeon again, you must not release it.