Save the porpoise without fins from China from the edge of extinction

Chinese scientists are in a battle to save one of the last major animal species living in the Yangtze river – and a complete prohibition of fishing in the region helps them.

At the Wuhan Hydrobiology Institute, just 5 km (3.1 miles) of the river banks, the preserved bodies of the river dolphin now extinguished (Baiji in Chinese) and pagayant are sitting silently behind the windows.

“Now that they have disappeared, we are going to save the porpoise of the Yangtze river,” said Professor Wang XI at the BBC. “It has become the most important animal here.”

It was in 2002 that the last known Baiji died, 22 years after the Institute’s researchers began to take care of this. A year later, the latest known paddle fish – a type of firefront fish that can reach more than 3 meters – has been accidentally captured by fishermen and, although it is radio and released, has disappeared.

The objective is now to stop the porpoise of the fine Yangtze river without wings – 1,200 of which remain in the wild, according to current estimates – to undergo the same fate.

“This is the only higher level predator in the river,” said Professor Wang. “They are rare and their figures reflect the health of the whole system ecology.”

The idea of stopping all fishing was designed for the first time by Professor Cao Wenxuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2006, but it took much more pressure from other scientists before a banal of 10 years finally entered into force almost five years ago.

Applied by the police, the ban has a potential prison sentence for people caught in fishing along the Yangtze, as well as adjacent lakes and tributaries. This was extremely disruptive and put 220,000 unemployed fishermen.

However, the porpoise without fins, which belongs to the oldest living branch of the mailgic tree of La Marsouin, remains in danger criticizing today.

Those who have been shown at the BBC at the Institute are in captivity to be studied by case. They can be seen above the water or below, after having descended the stairs next to a deep tank where the observation area is located.

Scientists say they are excited in the company of humans, and they certainly seem to be: running in the water and swimming at speed, near the glass with people on the other side. Swimming, they seem to look at you with a mischievous smile.

In the wild, they are always hung on where other species could not.

The construction of the main part of the three gorges dam in 2006 did not have a direct impact on the porpoise without fins, which does not have to go upstream to appear, although it has affected the fish they eat.

For other large marine animals, such as the Pagaie or the Chinese sturgeon, the structure was catastrophic.

Wang Ding, a member of the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN), specializing in cetaceans like the porpoise without fins, has devoted his life to the preservation of the health of Yangtze. He can see good and evil with these dams – and recalls how things were going on.

“Each season of floods, we had to organize a team with strong muscles, using many men, to go to sleep on the bank of the river, in case a flood occurs,” he said. “Then, if the flood struck, everyone would do their best to try to keep the sampling banks solid, to ensure that they were not broken by the dangerous precipitated water.”

Now, he says, the three gorges dam alleged against floods.

As Professor Wang points out, however, this massive river blockage structure also prevents Yangtze’s giant sturgeons from reaching their Frai terrains.

Although the endangered fish briefly seemed to find another location, he says, this is no longer the case-and these days are only in the river because the researchers pay them, 10,000 at a time.

Despite more than a million breed sturgeons in captivity released in the Yangtze last year, attempts to strengthen the population failed, because the fish do not happen again in nature.

Thus, the porpoise without fins does not end like that, Professor Wang and other scientists hope that the complete ban on current fishing will continue after the increase in the 10 initial years.

Their research, published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recorded a drastic increase in the number of fish since the entry into force of the ban in 2021.

Another threat to porpoise without fins could however be more difficult to resolve.

Wang Xi pointed out that “ships are very dangerous for animals’ brain because they are very noisy”.

It is said that it produces a form of underwater pollution that distress animals.

Chinese scientists believe that the sound of ships may have contributed to the disappearance of dolphins from the Baiji river in Yangtze, which used Sonar to communicate.

But it is one thing to ban fishing – it would be another thing to stop completely stopping river traffic which offers passengers as well as goods, and provides a cornerstone for a large part of the economy of Central China.

More feasible has been to force factories that produce chemicals to move away from the Yangtze. Thousands of them have been closed or moved in the last decade, in a movement that would have considerably improved the quality of water from the river.

There has also been community participation in the mastouin preservation push.

After retirement, Yang, he took amateur photography. Now, he says, he goes to the river every day with his camera equipment trying to spot animals.

When he gets good shots, he transmits them to scientists, who say he does a better job than almost anyone who follows his progress.

Mr. Yang says he saw once a porpoise in distress that had been taken in a net. He informed the local authorities, who closed this section of the river to all expeditions until it could be rescued – and it turned out that La Pamouinée soon released was pregnant. He felt pretty good about it, he said.

It is the Marsouin numbers, however, which tell the most convincing story.

In the 1990s, there were 3,300 porpoises without fins in the wild. In 2006, it had half reduced.

Then, the fishing prohibitions entered, the factories were moved and the decline stopped. Not only that, but in the past five years of records, the mastouin numbers have increased by almost a quarter.

Scientists are proud of these figures – and the implications they hold for environmental health more broadly.

“We save the porpoise without fins to save the Yangtze river,” said Wang Ding. “It’s like a big mirror, to have an idea of how we have protected this ecosystem well.

“If the porpoises are doing well, if their number increases, it means that the ecological health of the whole river also improves.”