I often fish in the Yellow River beach, and I have a feeling: the fish I have heard of the most is the Yellow River carp, and the most difficult to catch is the Yellow River carp.
For an aficionado, hearing the name "Yellow River Carp" makes the mood slightly complicated. This precious fish species, which was once the city's business card, is now rare, and it seems that they can only be seen on the Internet.
The big carp of the Yellow River has a good name that has spread all over the world.
It is ranked first among the four famous fish in China, and there are verses to prove it!
The Book of Poetry says: "If you eat fish, you will be a carp of the river!" "It means that if you want to eat fish, you must eat carp from the river. The "river" in the ancient book refers to the Yellow River.
The ancient books also say that the color and gold, Luo carp is the most expensive, Jiang Han is second, and Hao will go down. That is, the carp in the Luoyang area of the Yellow River is the most precious. Therefore, there is also a saying that "Luo carp is more expensive than cattle and sheep".
Yellow River carp
The carp of the Yellow River was once the city card of Zhengzhou, Luoyang and other places. The carp that grows here is the most valuable, and it also has a certain origin.
The area from Mengjin in the lower reaches of Luoyang to Taohuayu in Zhengzhou is the dividing line between the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Previously, the dividing line was set at Mengjin in Luoyang, and later changed to Taohuayu in Zhengzhou. The reason why the dividing line of the Yellow River was chosen in these two places is determined by the unique geographical location of these places.
When the Yellow River flows below Mengjin in Luoyang, the terrain becomes less dangerous. After passing Taohuayu in Zhengzhou, the terrain changed again, becoming flat, and the flow of the river gradually slowed down. A large amount of sediment washed down from the upper reaches of the Yellow River began to be deposited, and these sediments carried a large number of dead grasses, bait insects, and microorganisms, which provided abundant bait for the Yellow River carp and became a feeding ground for the carp.
The carp that flows down from the upper reaches of the Yellow River begin to stay here to feed in Luoyang and Zhengzhou, so the carp here become very fat.
In order to survive in the muddy Yellow River, the carp in the Yellow River are very different from other carp in other waters.
In addition to its slender stature, it is characterized by its "four whiskers and four holes", which is said to be the result of natural selection of the Yellow River carp through its struggle with high levels of sediment. In order to survive in low-oxygen, high-sand environments, they have two extra nostrils and two beards.
Beards, mainly to aid in foraging. Having four beards is more conducive to them to ask for food in the muddy waters of the Yellow River. At the same time, the four nostrils also have a good sand removal function, so as not to choke on the sediment.
In the Yellow River, which has a high sediment content, these two secret weapons allow the Yellow River carp to survive tenaciously. "Four whiskers and four holes" can be said to be an evolutionary wonder of the Yellow River carp.
Every summer, when the Yellow River Xiaolangdi Reservoir sand is diverted, the sediment content of the river water will increase exponentially, up to about 500 kilograms per cubic meter.
Although the Yellow River carp have a strong ability to adapt to the environment, in recent decades, they seem to have gradually disappeared into the Yellow River.
In the 70s and 90s of the last century, the lower reaches of the Yellow River were cut off more than 20 times, which brought disaster to the carp of the Yellow River. Later, although water was transported downstream through the Xiaolangdi Reservoir, the population of carp in the Yellow River has fallen off a cliff since 2000 due to the impact of overfishing.
According to the data, in the 50s of the last century, fishermen in Sanmenxia, Lingbao, Luoyang and other river sections could catch hundreds of catties of Yellow River carp in one boat, and the entire Henan section caught more than 300,000 catties of Yellow River carp a year.
In the mid-to-late 80s, this figure had been reduced to 10,000 catties. By the year 2000, authentic Yellow River carp was almost unavailable.
In addition to the influence of factors such as human fishing and the interruption of the Yellow River, the genetic inheritance of the Yellow River carp has also gone wrong.
The main reason for this is that the quality of the Yellow River carp has deteriorated due to the alien hybrid carp, and even the genes are being assimilated until they disappear.
It is reported that in the seventies and eighties of the last century, the field of fish farming has set off a wave of "north fish to the south" and "south fish to the north" upsurge, some carp species were introduced into the Yellow River Basin, in a strict sense, this kind of human factors caused by a wide range of fish migration, also belongs to the invasion of alien species!
Eventually, the strong invasion of these "hybrid legions" accelerated the decline of the Yellow River carp genes.
In recent years, various release activities have become more popular, which has accelerated the decline of the Yellow River carp.
Every time there is a specific release day, some believers often pull a whole vehicle of farmed carp to the Yellow River to release it, and the amount of fish released at a time can reach thousands or tens of thousands of catties. Such things happen day after day, resulting in carp in the Yellow River, which has been occupied by "miscellaneous deliveries".
Because of the low price of farmed carp, most of the releasers use it as a release target. These hybrid carp mated with the Yellow River carp, and after several generations of changes, the authentic Yellow River carp genes can no longer be found!
The hybrid carp has messy scales, different body colors, and the flesh has become very loose, and even has an earthy smell, which is far inferior to the previous Yellow River carp.
The reality is more embarrassing, and similar release activities are not restricted. The Yellow River has become a world of all kinds of hybrid carp, although the Yellow River carp has undergone the perfect evolution of "four whiskers and four holes", but after all, it still loses to these "miscellaneous goods".
I have to say that this is a very regrettable thing.
Seeing this, many netizens inevitably felt some regrets. So can you still see the authentic Yellow River carp? Will their genes disappear?
Such questions were referred to the fish experts at the Fisheries Research Institute.
At present, the state has established the Yellow River Carp Germplasm Resources Protection Area in the Zhengzhou section, and aquatic experts have selected and improved the Yellow River carp, but only selected and bred species that are relatively close to the carp in the original channel of the Yellow River, and these species can only spend their fish life in the fish pond before being put on the table.
If the problem of random release is not solved, there will definitely be more and more "miscellaneous deliveries" in the Yellow River. For example, eight-bearded catfish, tilapia and other species have appeared in the Yellow River.
Those unreliable releasers, who may not know their "good intentions", will eventually accelerate the decline of the genetically good Yellow River carp and lose to a group of "hybrid legions".