On April 8, an activity of releasing Chinese sturgeons was held jointly by Three Gorges Corporation and Yichang Government, and 500 large-sized Chinese sturgeons were released into Yangtze River.

　　The proliferation and release of Chinese sturgeon has been lasting for 33 years. In 2009, the Research Institute of Chinese Sturgeon has made a breakthrough in total artificial reproduction technology of Chinese sturgeons, making the reproduction of Chinese sturgeons not rely on wild population any more. According monitored statistics there have been 30% to 40% large-sized Chinese sturgeons which were released migrating into the sea successfully in recent years, and the larger the Chinese sturgeons’ sizes were, the higher the survival rate of their migration was.

　　Experts introduced that 17.5 thousand large-sized Chinese sturgeons belonging to the second generation have been released since 2011. And Chinese sturgeons released this year were the second generations born from 2011 to 2014, in which the oldest one was six while the youngest one was three and the average weight of Chinese sturgeons was the heaviest over the years. The number of Chinese sturgeons spawning in the Yangtze River was less than 100 each year, indicating that the population quantity of the distribution of Chinese sturgeons in the Yangtze River and offshore areas of it was relatively few. Therefore, it was extremely important to increase quantity of wild population through the artificial proliferation and release of large-sized Chinese sturgeons.

　　In order to get the hang of the movement rule of the migration of Chinese sturgeons, we released those Chinese sturgeons this year, adopting the in-vitro T tag, PIT tag and Sonar tag to collect their DNA data for the establishment of the information database of genetic molecules of Chinese sturgeons, which could help us know the trends of the growth and migration of Chinese sturgeons well in time. (Journalist: Wu Qinhu; Correspondent: Zhang Jin)