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.