In December 2019, an article titled "What Lessons the Extinction of the White Sturgeon Has Left for the Conservation of Yangtze River Organisms" was published in the international academic journal Holistic Environmental Science. The article claims that the Chinese national treasure Yangtze River white sturgeon has become extinct. Yangtze River white sturgeon, known as "giant panda in the water" and "living fossil of the Yangtze River Basin" for its rarity and preciousness, has existed as early as the Cretaceous era and has a history of 200 million years. In that era of successive extinctions of dinosaurs, in the era when the water overlord plesiosaur had no choice but to disappear, the Yangtze River white sturgeon miraculously survived.
So why the Yangtze River white sturgeon will eventually fall in the 21st century.
"This conclusion about the extinction of the white sturgeon is scientific and will not change." Professor Wei Qiwei, chief scientist of the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, said helplessly.
Is the environment getting worse, or are humans too greedy?
What exactly led to the extinction of the Yangtze River white sturgeon? Is there any possibility that the Yangtze River white sturgeon will survive?
Let me give you the answer today.
Introduction to the Yangtze River white sturgeon
The Yangtze River white sturgeon (Psephurus gladius), also known as the "Chinese spoon-kissed sturgeon", chinese swordfish or elephant-nosed sturgeon, was known in ancient times as tuna.
"Thousand pounds of wax and ten thousand pounds of elephants, the yellow row is not very large" refers to the Yangtze River white sturgeon.
With a body length of up to 3 meters and a weight of up to 300 kilograms, the Yangtze River white sturgeon is one of the largest freshwater fish in the world. According to the zoologist Bingzhi, in the 1950s, a 7-meter-long white sturgeon was caught in the Yangtze River.
The Yangtze River white sturgeon has round and small eyes, a fusiform shape, and a smooth body. Their back and caudal fins are purple-grey , the caudal fins are crooked , and the upper leaves are longer than the lower leaves , so they are called crooked tails. Although the name is the Yangtze River white sturgeon, it is mainly only white on the abdomen.
Their teeth are small, and the rest of the bones are almost entirely made of cartilage. With the exception of the caudal fin and a few small scales in a few places, there are almost no scales on the rest of the body.
The Yangtze River white sturgeon has a snout as long as an elephant trunk, which has the role of detecting bioelectronic activity, which facilitates their predation on fish or crustaceans. It is a living "radar in the water".
The Yangtze River white sturgeon also has a distant relative, which is the Spoon Sturgeon (scientific name: Polyodon spathula) located in the Mississippi River in the Americas. Similarly, spoon-sturgeon detects the presence of prey through water. Unlike the Yangtze River white sturgeon , the spoon sturgeon has a paddle-shaped snout. Usually scientists will refer to spoon sturgeon when studying the Yangtze River white sturgeon.
The Yangtze River white sturgeon only matures sexually at the age of 8. After sexual maturity, they will choose to swim upstream and lay eggs in the upper reaches of the river. Due to the longer time of sexual maturation, the ability to reproduce iterations is also weaker.
The last side of the Yangtze River white sturgeon
In December 2002, fishermen in the Xiaguan Basin of the Yangtze River discovered a female Yangtze River white sturgeon, 3.3 meters long and weighing 130 kilograms, and the fishermen realized the importance and hurriedly contacted Professor Wei Qiwei's team. The team members tried their best to save it, but after 1 month, the Yangtze River white sturgeon died.
A month later, in January 2003, another accidentally caught Yangtze River white sturgeon was found in Yibin. Professor Wei Qiwei's team once again quickly treated it, installed a sonar tracking signal device on it, and then released it back into the Yangtze River. No one expected that this would be the last time in human history to witness the Yangtze River white sturgeon. Later, an incident added a mysterious color to the release of the White Sturgeon in the Yangtze River.
On January 29, 2003, when the released Yangtze River white sturgeon swam to the Kowloon Beach river section, due to the rapid flow of water, the signal speedboat used for tracking hit the reef, and the speedboat and tracking equipment were damaged together, and the tracking operation could not be completed. Since then, the Yangtze River white sturgeon seems to have entered the black hole, and there is no trace.
Announcement of the extinction of the Yangtze River white sturgeon
From 2006 to 2007, there were 8 similar signals of Yangtze River white sturgeon during sonar testing in the section from Pingshan to Luzhou, but people could no longer find the living yangtze river white sturgeon.
As a result, scholars generally estimate that the Yangtze River white sturgeon disappeared between 2005 and 2010. At that time, everyone still had the hope that the Yangtze River white sturgeon still existed. Until 2019, no trace of the Yangtze River white sturgeon has been found so far.
The academic community can only helplessly announce the fact that the Yangtze River white sturgeon is extinct.
Although the International Union for Conservation of Nature has not yet officially announced the extinction of the Yangtze River white sturgeon. But the fact that the Yangtze River white sturgeon is in the stage of "functional extinction" will not change.
A stone stirred up thousands of waves, and the extinction of the Yangtze River white sturgeon caused great public concern and indignation.
What caused the extinction of the Yangtze River white sturgeon
"If you can't get into the pond, the fish turtles can't eat it." The Yangtze River Basin was once rich in fish. However, due to people's overfishing, environmental damage and the rise of shipping, the fish in the Yangtze River fell off a cliff.
In 1954, the Yangtze River fishing production was 420,000 tons, and by 2011, the Yangtze River fishing production was only about 50,000 tons. Almost 9 times less.
Fishermen at that time also used a very short-sighted and selfish way of fishing, that is, electric fish. By collective coronaing a body of water fish, it is then fished with nets. So, although as early as 1983, the Yangtze River white sturgeon was listed as a first-class protected animal. However, by 1999, the number of White Sturgeon in the Yangtze River did not increase but decreased, and it was less than 400 heads.
In addition, the construction of dams may also be one of the reasons for the extinction of the Yangtze River white sturgeon. Because early dams did not build fish migration paths, fish could not return upstream to spawn, and the breeding path was blocked.
The extinction of the Yangtze River white sturgeon has raised the issue of environmental protection in public watersheds to an unprecedented level. Since January 1, 2021, the Yangtze River has been banned from fishing for 10 years to restore ecology.
However, everything is hard to return, and there is no regret medicine in the world.
We also look forward to the return of the Yangtze River white sturgeon
Where did the white sturgeon released in 2003 go, and whether the 8 suspected signals in 2006 were Yangtze River white sturgeon. Did the Yangtze River white sturgeon flee to inaccessible waters to protect themselves?
Or maybe we open our minds, and the Yangtze River white sturgeon reaches another parallel world or a black hole in space-time.
All this is still a mystery, and we cannot give up hope. After all, the dinosaurs are extinct, and the Yangtze River white sturgeon can actually survive. This proves that they must be extraordinary.
I hope that after the ecology of the Yangtze River Basin is restored, we can see the cute giant pandas in the water again.