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Chinese Paddlefish and Wild Yangtze Sturgeon Extinct

A file photo from April 29, 2007, shows a marine official recovering a dead Chinese sturgeon in the Yangtze River. (Reuters)
A file photo from April 29, 2007, shows a marine official recovering a dead Chinese sturgeon in the Yangtze River. (Reuters)
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Chinese Paddlefish and Wild Yangtze Sturgeon Extinct

A file photo from April 29, 2007, shows a marine official recovering a dead Chinese sturgeon in the Yangtze River. (Reuters)
A file photo from April 29, 2007, shows a marine official recovering a dead Chinese sturgeon in the Yangtze River. (Reuters)

The extinction of the Chinese Paddlefish and wild Yangtze Sturgeon, declared by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), unleashed a torrent of comments on China's social media platforms on Friday urging more environmental protection.

The IUCN's latest list of threatened species, published on its website on Thursday, showed that 100% of the world's remaining 26 sturgeon species are now at risk of extinction, up from 85% in 2009.

"The assessments are based on new calculations which show their decline over the past three generations to be steeper than previously thought," the conservation group said, adding that the reassessment had also confirmed the extinction of the Chinese Paddlefish.

Both the Chinese Paddlefish and the Yangtze Sturgeon were common species in the Yangzte river basin which has been plagued by heavy shipping traffic, overfishing and water pollution.

The topic was one of the most discussed on China's Weibo, a social media platform similar to Twitter, on Friday.

"A biological population that lived for 150 million years was actually made extinct by modern civilization? I want to ask: where is our civilization?" one user called Snow Mountain said.

The Chinese Paddlefish was one of the world's biggest fresh water fish species and could grow up to 7 meters (yards) in length. The IUCN first declared it "critically endangered" in 1996.

The Yangzte Sturgeon, which could grow up to 8 meters (yards), was highly sensitive to increased noise on the river. Its meat was considered a delicacy in China and it was also fished as a source of caviar.

The country has a breeding program for the sturgeons but has not been successful at maintaining them in the wild. China implemented a fishing ban in some parts of the Yangzte river in 2021.

"Everyone, support the ban on fishing in the Yangtze River, and protect the habitats that are still in the Yangtze River," a user called Lychee said.

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Varieties

Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File

The amount of farmed seafood we consume -- as opposed to that taken wild from our waters -- is soaring every year, making aquaculture an ever-more important source for many diets, and a response to overfishing.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 99 million tons of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) were farmed around the world in 2023, five times more than three decades ago.

Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing around the world -- but with large disparities from species to species.

Fast-growing species

The two biggest sellers on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, mainly came from freshwater farming, while other widely-consumed fish, like herring, came just from deep sea fishing

Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France's national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP that fish farmers choose species that grow quickly and with simple requirements, to be able to control the life cycle.

Sales of the most widely farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, came to 1.9 million tons in 2023, 99 percent of which were farmed.

"We know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones," Laugier said.

Asia main producer
Asia is by far the biggest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 percent of the 136 million tons -- of both animal and plant species -- produced under manmade conditions in 2023.

"For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent," the Ifremer researcher said.

At the other end of the spectrum, sardines and herring are just fished in the oceans, mainly for profitability reasons as some fish grow very slowly.

"It takes around two years to get an adult-sized sardine," Laugier said.

He said farming of some fish has not yet been started as, "for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource".

Seaweed

Little known in the West, seaweed nevertheless accounts for almost a third of world aquaculture production.

Almost exclusively from Asia, seaweed production increased by nearly 200 percent in two decades, to 38 million tons. It is mainly used in industry, in jellies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the expert said.

He said seaweed also has the major advantage of absorbing not just CO2 in the oceans, but also nitrogen and certain pollutants.

"And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon," Laugier said.