Lead: On November 15, People’s Daily published the article written by Professor Yang Ruibin from College of Fisheries (HZAU) about the conservation of Yangtze finless porpoises against a backdrop of the Yangtze River Protection on Page 14.

Yangtze finless porpoise has a very lovely look---big head, small eyes and a puckering mouth, and a cute name--- “Smiling Angle”. People can hardly resist the angel’s charm, and I am no exception. As a scholar from College of Fisheries, I have long engaged in such work as fishery resources and environment investigation, ecological conservation and restoration. Since 2010, I have been working with experts on Yangtze finless porpoises and students from the Blue Elf Volunteering Team (HZAU) to protect the finless porpoises.

A lot of people may wonder where did the Yangtze finless porpoises come from. Well, it could date back to millions of years ago when there were two varieties of cetaceans which swam into the Yangtze River successively. As time developed, they gradually evolved into freshwater porpoises unique to the Yangtze River: one is Lipotes vexillifer Miller, who is in white with a long mouth; the other is Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis(Yangtze finless porpoises), who is in black with a smiling face. In 1991, at least 2,550 of Yangtze finless porpoises were distributed in the main stream of the Yangtze River, but by July 2018, the number of it was only 1,012.

To protect these lovely aquatic mammals, we tried every means to reconstruct submerged plant communities in shallow water areas and restore aquatic ecosystem of oxbows of the Yangtze River. At present, as the Yangtze River Protection advances, we can see more finless porpoises reemerging in the ever-expanding waters.

My research focus is on the aquatic ecosystem inspection and ecological restoration in the Tian-e-zhou oxbow of Yangtze River, Shishou, Hubei Province, the first ex-situ conservation site of the finless porpoises. There are less human activities in this area, and the water quality is similar to that of the Yangtze River. And the fish resources are abundant, which can provide sufficient food for the finless porpoise. However, in 1980s, the over breeding of the herbivore aquatic animals such as crabs and grass carps turned the “underwater forest” into the “underwater desert”. As a result, small fish could not reproduce here and finless porpoises were deprived of food.

To save them, we decided to reconstruct the “underwater forest” which entailed great efforts. It turned out that we managed to grow submerged plants, however, they were instantly washed away when the flood came. Moreover, the plants with tender roots were broken by the strong wave as they grew up. After years of experiments, we found that Nymphoides peltatum had a well-developed root system so that they can grow well under water. After the successful cultivation of it, we found more species of suitable submerged plants, such as Potamogeton octandrus Poir with big leaves and Vallisneria natans, etc. Now, there are more small fish in some waters of Tian-e-zhou Oxbow, and the food for finless porpoise can be basically guaranteed.

With our joint efforts, the number of the Yangtze finless porpoises has increased from the original 5 to 101 as of April. Moreover, Tian-e-zhou Oxbow reserves has exported 24 finless porpoises to the ex-situ reserves and sanctuaries such as Laowan oxbow of Honghu, Hubei Province and Xijiang, Anqing, Anhui Province, and become important bases for the ex-situ conservation of Yangtze finless porpoises.

Source: http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2021/1115/61955.shtml

Translated by Sun Ling

Supervised by Wang Xiaoyan