Acipenser sinensis is a fish of the family Acipenseridae. Common individuals are 0.4-1.3m long and weigh 50-300kg; The largest individual is 5 meters long and weighs up to 600 kilograms. Acipenser sinensis is the largest fish in the Yangtze River, so it is known as the "fish king of the Yangtze River". The body is spindle-shaped, the tip of the head is long, and there are four whiskers in front of the mouth. The mouth is located on the abdomen, which is flexible and can be stretched into a tube. The life cycle is long, and the longest life span can reach 40 years. It is a first-class protected wild animal in China, and it is also a living fossil, known as the "giant panda in the water". It is a descendant of the ancient spiny fish, the same ancestor of fish, with a history of 140 million years. Living at the same time as dinosaurs. Acipenser sinensis is mainly distributed in China, Japan, South Korea, Lao People's Democratic Republic and North Korea.

Acipenser sinensis is a kind of benthic fish, which has a narrow feeding habit and belongs to carnivorous fish. It mainly feeds on some small or slow-moving benthic animals, and mainly feeds on fish in the ocean, followed by crustaceans and less molluscs. Juvenile Chinese sturgeon mainly feed on benthic fishes, such as Ophiuchus and Pupa, krill and viper, and generally stop eating during spawning period.

In summer and autumn, the Chinese sturgeon living in the shallow waters outside the Yangtze River estuary will swim back to the Yangtze River, and after more than 3,000 kilometers of upstream fighting, it will return to the Jinsha River to lay eggs and breed. After delivery, when the young fish grow up to about 15 cm, they are taken to live in the open sea. In this way, they were born in the upper reaches of rivers for generations and grew in the sea.

The reason why Chinese sturgeon is listed as a national first-class protected animal is that in the 1960s, Chinese sturgeon caught a large amount in Chongming waters of the Yangtze River Estuary and became an important fishery resource. After the closure of Gezhouba dam, the spawning migration route of parent fish was blocked, and it was impossible to swim back to the upstream spawning ground. Therefore, the number of juvenile fish declined sharply in three years, and the resources decreased by about 97%. In recent years, the number of parent fish is only about 100. The population of ACIPENSER sinensis is decreasing day by day. In order to avoid the extinction of this "living fossil" which is a specialty of China, ACIPENSER sinensis has been listed as a protected object by relevant departments.

The Ministry of Agriculture has also taken a series of targeted protection measures: strictly limiting the number, location and time of catching parent sturgeons for artificial breeding and scientific experiments, protecting the young sturgeons along the Yangtze River and the estuary, and expanding the scale of artificial breeding and release of Chinese sturgeon.