2011-12-30 11:15:07

YICHANG, Hubei, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- Around 50,000 artificially propagated acipenser sinensis, or Chinese sturgeons, have been born in a research institution in central China\'s Hubei province, experts here said on Wednesday.
It is the first time that such a large number of the fish have been propagated at one time, said Yang Yuanjin, deputy director of the Chinese Sturgeon Research Institute (CSRI) of the China Three Gorges Corporation.
"It is a symbol of the maturity of China\'s artificial breeding of Chinese sturgeons, and the technology makes it a reality to protect the fish with all human efforts," said Yang.
The fish were second-generation sturgeons hatched from 100,000 fertilized eggs from the first-generation fish which were artificially-bred from the wild ones. It took around 100 to 120 hours for the fish to grow from inseminated eggs into fries.
Chinese researchers were successful in artificially inseminating and spawning a culture of sturgeons in 2009. Nearly 20,000 fish were born at that time, but it could not be counted as "mass production," according to Yang.
The scientists will release the fish in April next year to help gather further information on the habitat of the species and serve as a pilot for more releases, said Yang.
Long-term research has now found safe places for spawning of the fish in the downstream of the Gezhouba Dam, but the population of wild sturgeons in China has remained small, Yang added.
Believed to have lived at the same time as dinosaurs, Chinese sturgeons have existed for more than 140 million years. The fish, nicknamed "aquatic pandas," have been listed as a wild creature under state top protection.
The CSRI, founded in 1982, is the only research institution for Chinese sturgeons in China and has released more than 5 million of the fish into the wild.