The sonar signal of the underwater acoustic monitoring equipment ...... "Boom Boom" came clearly.
On February 28, 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced the latest scientific research data: the natural population of the Yangtze finless porpoise is 1,249, and it has stopped falling and rebounded!
On September 3, 2023, in the waters of Xinzhou in the Wuhan section of the Yangtze River, two Yangtze finless porpoises walked together.
On December 25, 2023, data provided by the underwater acoustic monitoring equipment of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed that in the past three months, 26,407 sonar signals from the Yangtze finless porpoise have been continuously recorded in the Shuangliu waters of Xinzhou in the Wuhan section of the Yangtze River alone.
In May 2007, the finless porpoise "Taotao" frolicked in the Baiji Dolphin Pavilion of the Institute of Aquatic Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is the world's first finless porpoise to be successfully bred by natural mating in captivity.
In July 2007, in the Baiji Dolphin Pavilion of the Institute of Aquatic Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the mother of the finless porpoise "Taotao" died of illness, and the researchers wept sadly.
In July 2008, a Yangtze finless porpoise was being produced in captivity, and researchers monitored and recorded it in real time.
Wang Ding, a researcher at the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that in 2006, 2012 and 2017, nearly 100 kilometers of the Wuhan section of the Yangtze River was a blank area for the distribution of the Yangtze finless porpoise, and the Yangtze finless porpoise population below Nanjing was still fragmented.
Before 2006, scientists from China, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan and other countries jointly discovered that the natural population of the Yangtze finless porpoise had also declined sharply.
At that time, in captivity, the Yangtze finless porpoise mated naturally for the first time and successfully bred the finless porpoise "Taotao", which gave great confidence to the researchers. The Yangtze finless porpoise rescue action plan has been launched one after another, during which it has experienced natural and scientific research difficulties such as drought in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, ice disasters, and genetic barrier inbreeding of the Yangtze finless porpoise.
In May 2011, researchers were rescuing the Yangtze finless porpoise, when the Yangtze River drought was severe, and the water area of Shishou Tianezhou in Hubei Province was decreasing, and the survival of the finless porpoise was worrying.
In March 2015, during the ex-situ conservation of the Yangtze finless porpoise in Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, researchers took blood samples for the Yangtze finless porpoise physical examination and established a DNA genetic information file.
Thanks to the efforts of scientific researchers, the number of Yangtze finless porpoises in the reserve in Tianezhou, Shishou City, Hubei Province, has grown rapidly from five to 100 this year, and the reserve has been recognized by the International Whaling Commission's Small Cetacean Commission as the world's only successful example of ex situ conservation of freshwater cetaceans.
On January 11, 2014, in the waters of Tianxingzhou in the Wuhan section of the Yangtze River, four trapped Yangtze finless porpoises were rescued and sent to Shishou Tianezhou, Hubei Province to settle down.
Since 2014, Poyang Lake, China's largest Yangtze finless porpoise germplasm repository, has relocated 16 finless porpoises to Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and other places in two batches to supplement the population of the three ex-situ reserves and optimize their population genetic structure.
On March 13, 2015, researchers transported the Yangtze finless porpoise to Hubei in Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, to optimize the genetic structure of its population.
In January 2020, the 10-year fishing ban plan for the Yangtze River was launched, and the aquatic biological resources and fishery resources of the Yangtze River were restored. On April 25, 2023, four Yangtze finless porpoises from an ex situ reserve returned to the main stream of the Yangtze River in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, marking the first time that China has rewilded an ex-situ protected endangered aquatic mammal.
On the afternoon of November 2, 2023, Wuhan swimmers found three Yangtze finless porpoises emerging from the water one after another, which was the first time in many years that the Yangtze finless porpoise was recorded to reappear in the central city of Wuhan. On November 22, 2023, the Jiangsu Provincial Environmental Monitoring Center announced the results of the Yangtze finless porpoise population survey in the Jiangsu section of the Yangtze River: a large group of more than 10 finless porpoises was recorded for the first time in the Nanjing section.
On November 7, 2023, near the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, a Yangtze finless porpoise swims, and dolphin watching by the river has become a part of the daily life of citizens.
Journalist and photographer Gao Baoyan
Source: Yangtze River Daily released in Wuhan