Senior still fighting to protect fish

Wei Qiwei began working to protect the Chinese sturgeon and trying to restore the endangered species population in the wild because of the country's job-assignment mechanism for university graduates last century.

The 64-year-old, however, has devoted about four decades of his life to the effort despite highly inadequate funding for an extended period of time, and he is determined to forge ahead with his work even after his retirement.

In 1984, when he graduated from Jiangxi University with a biology degree, he was assigned to work with a magazine run by the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute in Hubei province, which is affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences.

At the time, all new graduates needed to undergo training at the institute's testing grounds for one year before they officially assumed their posts.

When Wei finished his training, however, the head of the magazine who recruited him from Jiangxi University was on a business trip and failed to ask him to return to the magazine. He was then asked by the head of another department if he was willing to join a program focused on the protection of Chinese sturgeon, and he took the offer.

He soon encountered difficulties in his work regarding the fish, which is often referred to as a "living fossil" as it has existed for more than 140 million years.

Saving the Chinese sturgeon was once a hot topic in 1981, when a river diversion closure project was completed for the Gezhouba Dam, a sprawling facility for water resources management and hydroelectric power station on the Yangtze's mainstream, as the dam could have had some adverse impact on the habitat and population of the species, according to Wei.

By 1983, however, it was no longer a topic of high concern, he said, because artificial reproduction efforts of the fish were successful, and it was determined that there were new spawning grounds for the species downstream from the dam.

In 1985, the nation suspended funding for the institute's Chinese sturgeon program. Despite the setback, the head of Wei's institute, who then held that it was too early to conclude that the threat from the dam was over, decided to allocate 20,000 yuan ($2,759) from the institute's budget each year to support the monitoring of the species.

"That was far from enough," he said, adding he had to work without adequate funding for about 10 years.

To find the specific location of the spawning ground of the Chinese sturgeon downstream from Gezhouba, Wei rented a boat to catch coreius heterodon, a species of ray-finned fish, and then dissected them to see if there were Chinese sturgeon eggs in their stomachs.

With approval from the Hubei fishery authority, he was able to raise funds for the program by selling Chinese sturgeons that had been dissected to researchers. He also sold ray-finned fish that he caught.

Chinese sturgeon can grow to as much as 4 meters long and weigh as much as 500 kilograms. In the 1990s, it was popular for many researchers to apply to study in the United States. Wei was invited to participate in exchange programs with US scientists researching Chinese sturgeon protection, and some offered to take him on as their student.

Wei declined their offers.

"If I agreed, I would have had to study in the US for two years without coming back to China. Then who would have done the breeding work in the autumn?" he said, adding that nobody besides him would have been willing to take up the exhausting work.

Wei stressed that breeding Chinese sturgeons, whose life expectancy can reach 40 years, requires long-term persistence.

"Many fish species need only three to five years to reach sexual maturity. Chinese sturgeons, however, need 15 years," he said.

In the early 1990s, the population of Chinese sturgeon decreased significantly due to imbalances in gender and age, proof that protection efforts were still necessary.

China now has about 3,000 first-generation wild Chinese sturgeons. Wei said he believes that about half of them will be able to grow into adult fish, and if they are well nurtured, it's highly possible that they can annually produce millions of fish fry.

He said his team estimates that if at least 1 million juvenile Chinese sturgeons are released into the wild each year, the size of the population needed to ensure adequate natural reproduction will be restored by 2036.

Since China began releasing artificially bred Chinese sturgeons in 1984, nearly 8.4 million juveniles have been released into the Yangtze. But the species did not naturally reproduce for seven straight years, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Though Wei has retired from the institute, he insists on continuing to contribute to the protection of the Chinese sturgeon. In 2022, he set up a protection center for the species in Wuhan, Hubei's capital.

"For us who are engaged in wildlife protection, we are always racing against the speed of wildlife extinction. If we lose the race, species will go extinct," he said.