Psephurus gladius

The white sturgeon is one of the largest freshwater fish, named for its lighter color. It is also known as the harp fish, the swordfish, and the ancient name tuna. Like the Chinese sturgeon, it has existed for 150 million years and is one of the very few ancient fish that survived from the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic Era.

Fish that are born in freshwater, migrate to the sea as young children, and then return to freshwater to spawn are called anadromous fish. The largest of these fish is the white sturgeon, which averages 2.3 meters long and weighs 65 to 130 kilograms. Sturgeons have diamond-shaped, enamel-like scales. Because the white sturgeon is very large, it can directly swallow many large freshwater fish. According to the records of Professor Bingzhi, a famous zoologist, several decades ago, someone caught a white sturgeon in Nanjing that was 7.5 meters long and weighed 908 kilograms. Sichuan fishermen also say that "a thousand pounds of Lazi (Chinese sturgeon) weighs ten thousand pounds of Xiang (white sturgeon)". Therefore, adult white sturgeons are almost invincible in the Yangtze River, at the top of the food chain, and are also known as the "King of Chinese Freshwater Fish".

The white sturgeon, a relic animal that survived the catastrophe, is extremely precious in scientific research, and the existing population is extremely small. For this reason, the "List of Key Protected Wildlife" issued twice by the Environmental Protection Committee of the State Council of China in 1983 and 1987 listed it as a Class I precious and rare animal under key protection. It belongs to China's national Class I protected wildlife. At that time, the scientific research department was working on artificial breeding research, but it was unable to carry out large-scale artificial breeding. It was strictly prohibited to catch and kill parent and young fish, and strongly advocated the return of young sturgeons to the river to protect and save this rare and endangered species.

In 2003, the white sturgeon that was mistakenly caught in Yibin was tall, up to 3 meters long and weighed 160 kilograms. So many years have passed, and the white sturgeon has never appeared in human vision again. Due to environmental changes, there are no natural conditions for the survival of the white sturgeon. This makes our understanding of it extremely limited, and we don’t even know much about its average lifespan, and can only roughly estimate it. Even some young researchers in the research team have never witnessed it in the wild.

Listed in the "Red List of Endangered Species of the World Conservation Union" (IUCN) 2009 ver 3.1-Critically Endangered (CR).

Listed in China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (February 5, 2021) Level 1.

On December 23, 2019, the Yangtze River white sturgeon (the genus white sturgeon contains only one species) was officially declared extinct.

On the evening of July 21, 2022, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) released an update report on the global species red list, announcing the extinction of the white sturgeon.

Protect wildlife and eliminate game.

Maintaining ecological balance is everyone's responsibility!

The white sturgeon was originally distributed in the major rivers between the Haihe River and the Qiantang River, and later mainly in the Yangtze River Basin, as well as the Yellow Sea, Bohai Sea and East China Sea.
It inhabits the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River mainstream, and can also survive in the brackish and freshwater waters of the river mouth, and occasionally enters large lakes along the river. Large individuals mostly inhabit the deep riverbed of the mainstream, are good at swimming, and often cruise in the vast water layers of various sections of the Yangtze River; young fish often go to tributaries, harbors, and even the brackish water areas of the Yangtze River estuary to find food.

The body of the white sturgeon is fusiform, slightly flat in the front, stout in the middle, and slightly flattened in the back. The head is extremely long, more than half the length of the body, and is covered with plum-shaped traps. The ventral side of the snout can be freely extended and retracted. There is a record in ancient books that "the mouth of the tuna is under the jaw, and the long nose is cartilaginous", which makes a concise summary of the ecological characteristics of the white sturgeon. There are small sharp teeth on the upper and lower jaws; there is a pair of short snout whiskers located on the ventral side. The eyes are small, with a pair of small whiskers located on the ventral side of the snout. The mouth is large, arc-shaped, and retractable, located on the ventral side of the head. There are two external nostrils on each side of the head. The entire surface of the head membrane is densely covered with many fine plum-shaped sensory nerve cell tissues. Th