Protecting all kinds of wild fish and aquariums is an important part of ecological protection.
Therefore, many readers often contact Yangtze River Jun and ask Yangtze River Jun whether they are protected animals and whether they can eat them....
For example, a Guangxi netizen found a large number of strange "loach" in a small stream in the local mountains, the number is extremely large, and he "easily fished dozens of them" at a time!
The whole body is bare without scales, the blunt round head is slender, is this a fish or a loach?
At first glance, Yangtze River Jun did not recognize what this was, carefully observed, and confirmed that this should be a kind of "belly loach", also known as a paraquat, which is one of the least common family genera in loach.
What is a loach?
Loach is different from a wide variety of wild fish (there are more than 400 kinds of freshwater fish in China), and the total number of loach species in the world is only about 10 large categories.
The loach, which is the smallest, but may also be the most rare one, its flesh is close to transparent, the gum content is extremely high, so it is often called "water ginseng"...
Why have many people never seen this "loach"? Not even sold in the average fish market?
In fact, the loach is originally an extremely common loach, in the Jinsha River, Jialing River, Minjiang River, Nanpan River and Hongshui River and other southwest and southeast rivers, there are a large number of distribution, and even in the northern Yellow River Basin, there are loach figures.
In fact, although the loach looks "soft and weak", but the adaptability and survivability are very strong, such as the Jinsha River, the Yellow River, this raging, turbid "muddy water", they can come and go freely, and very active, it can be seen that its vitality is exuberant.
Jinsha River, one of the main habitats of the loach
If so, why is this loach so rare today?
ChangJiangjun felt that it was still caused by human activities and excessive demand.
The loach is a "migratory" species that, in June and August, travels up from the rivers where it inhabits to lay its eggs in the mountain streams and streams upstream.
However, river channel changes, water level declines, hydropower stations and other factors make it difficult to migrate and spawn, and naturally its population cannot reproduce and decline...
Moreover, the loach is not large, but it is an omnivorous, carnivorous fish species, like to eat small fish and shrimp at the bottom of the river, insects, in the current river ecology, they have been difficult to feed and survive.
The riverway was changed and the hydropower station was stored, resulting in shallow water downstream, and the loach could not migrate, and the breeding route was cut off
Therefore, in the past ten years, the number of loach in the southwest rivers has rapidly decreased sharply, and some places have even nearly disappeared....
In fact, pushing forward a decade or two, the loach is still a daily delicacy on the table of people in the southwest river, a specialty of the Jinsha River and the Jialing River, and also the childhood memory of many netizens
@ Mountain does not turn me turn: I think the first fish caught is the loach, the kind of red tail, when the river (Jinsha River) is full of water, so muddy, crucian carp, carp are gone, is this fish a lot, good to miss
@ Dongdong said to me to roll: I used to raise several, put in the pond of the cave behind the house, and then went to college to come home, and saw them, all past five or six years, and then forgot to look, it is estimated that it is still alive ....
@ Master Zhou 123: This fish is very delicious, we call Xuan roe, now sell more than a hundred pounds, but it is difficult to buy at all, I heard that there is no way to breed.
....
Fishing for loach and eating loach are the childhood memories of many people
In fact, the loach is not only "vigorous", but also has a strong reproductive ability, as long as they are given a suitable habitat, they can quickly "flood" up...
Today's loach is indeed mostly distributed in some inaccessible deep mountain streams.
This Guangxi netizen found such a loach habitat to "easily catch dozens of fish" - it can also be seen that as long as they are given a little living space, their population can be so prosperous, but unfortunately, in today's large rivers, it is difficult to leave such a habitat for them, which is worth reflecting.
A loach caught by netizens
Can this loach be eaten? Is the genus not a protected animal?
ChangJiangjun has always stressed that the more "strange-looking" wild fish and aquariums, the more likely they are to protect animals, do not eat randomly, on the one hand, eating indiscriminately may lead to illegality, on the other hand, it is also equivalent to destroying the ecology.
However, the loach is not currently a protected fish species, it is edible, of course, should not remember the moderation, do not over-ask...
Netizens, do you have this magical "loach" in your hometown?
(Pay attention to us, keep abreast of interesting stories about aquatic species in the Yangtze River, and you can also contact us to break the news and contribute to ecological protection!) ）