In mid-January, a citizen of Nanjing saw a group of fish with moustaches while observing cormorants along the Yangtze River in Nanjing, which is a rare fish in the Yangtze River - copper fish, also known as twisted fish, golden loach, sesame fish, pointed stick and so on in some places.

On Jan. 31, at least three porpoises were swimming in the Xiangjiang River in the waters of Caijiazhou in Wangcheng, Changsha.

Porpoises have reportedly begun frequenting the Changsha Wangcheng waters of the Xiangjiang River in recent years.

At the video promotion meeting of the 10-year fishing ban on the Yangtze River held on Feb. 2, experts said that the crabs are once again migrating upriver to reach Dongting Lake, the upper limit of their historical distribution, after a lapse of 30 years.

And the incidence of common four-fish spawn has also improved to 7.87 billion.

In fact, looking back to 2022, there is even more exciting news.

After a pilot total ban on fishing in the Chishui River in 2017, the number of early resource species of endemic fish in the region rose from 32 before the ban to 37, with an overall increase in fish stocks of nearly one-fold.

The porpoise, mentioned above, was also found significantly more often in 2022, with the number of individual aggregated groups even exceeding 60.

Chizhou, Anhui province, and Wanzhou, Chongqing province, have both seen large schools of wild fish, and even the river water was "blackened" by the fish, so large schools of wild fish, both local residents and fishery protection team members said it was the first time they had seen.

All signs point to the effectiveness of the ban on fishing in the Yangtze River.

We often say, "live off the mountain, live off the water", the Yangtze River, a large number of residents are relying on fishing life, the Yangtze River fishing ban on this part of the people also lost may be the only source of economic, that is why the pressure to cut off the lives of other people to ban the fishing it? This has to start with the changes in the Yangtze River's fish stocks.

The Yangtze River, one of China's two major rivers, has a history of catching 450,000 tons of fish in a single year, a value that accounts for 60 percent of the country's total freshwater catch.

Because of the relatively slow growth rate of fish under natural conditions, the discharge of industrial and domestic sewage, the serious pollution of some waters, and the construction of various water conservancy facilities, the Yangtze River fishery has made history while its resources have been heavily damaged.

From 1956 to 1960, the Yangtze River fish catch was no longer the same, down to 260,000 tons, to the 1980s further decline to about 200,000 tons, around 2003 the annual catch is only less than 100,000 tons left.

With the decline in fish catches, the glorious moment of the Yangtze River three fresh fish (anchovies, swordfish and _ fish) is also in crisis.

According to statistics, that year, the highest annual output of shad reached 1575 tons, Yangtze River swordfish is a record 3,750 tons of the highest annual output of the Yangtze River, the Yangtze River three fresh once unlimited, because of the high yield, and its price is even cheaper than cabbages, weighing as much as 3 catties of anchovies, but only 80 cents a catty.

But now the Yangtze River has not been the courage of the year, the swordfish into crisis, the population has shrunk significantly, the number of older Yangtze River swordfish is becoming less and less, the average weight is also getting lower and lower, and the fish news from the original 20 days reduced to less than a week.

Shad even worse, in 1984, eight fishing boats continuous operation 30 days to catch 87, 1989 gold catch 17, to the 1990s, it is even more difficult to see the shad of the body, the most recent shad catch record or in 1998, Jiangsu section of a fisherman caught a 1.5kg shad, so far there have been 24 years no shad discovery record.

It is good that the decline of the Yangtze River's fish resources has drawn attention.

In January 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development issued a circular on the scope and time of the fishing ban in the key waters of the Yangtze River on its official website, announcing that a tentative 10-year year-round ban on fishing would be implemented from 0:00 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2021, at the latest, and that productive fishing of natural fishery resources would be banned during the fishing ban.

It's only been more than two years since the ban on fishing, and the results are already evident, with the occurrence of egg fry of the "four big fish" in the Jianli section of the Yangtze River reportedly rising from a minimum of less than 100 million to 7.87 billion.

Sampling of swordfish, a serious resource decliner, also increased in a stepwise manner, with the frequency of occurrence increasing from 25 percent to 100 percent, the number of catches increasing from 3.11 percent to 9.66 percent, and the weight increasing from 2.41 percent to 7.42 percent.

It's also because of the 10-year fishing ban that we've been able to see the wild fish frolicking as mentioned above.

With the recovery of wild fish stocks, some people are beginning to worry about the Yangtze River fish will not be like the wild boar as the proliferation of up, after all, "the opposite of what is extreme", anything more will be from a good thing to a bad thing, the wild boar more, damage to crops, injuries to the frequent occurrence of incidents.

In fact, this worry is superfluous.

The reason is very simple, the Yangtze River has existed for thousands of years, since ancient times has never been a problem of fish flooding, because the Yangtze River itself is a complete ecological chain, the ecological chain of organisms to follow the "big fish eat small fish, small fish eat shrimp, shrimp to eat the silt," the laws of nature, we see more fish, porpoises and other these The top of the food chain will become rich in food, and its population size will increase dramatically, thus limiting the unrestricted expansion of fish populations.

Although the ban on fishing in the Yangtze River has shown remarkable results, many species in the river are still hard to see, such as the anchovies mentioned above, and we all look forward to the return of the Yangtze River's albino dolphin, so the ban on fishing in the Yangtze River still has a long way to go.

Before the Yangtze River's fish stocks are fully restored, we should think more about protection rather than flooding.