China News Service, February 8th Every June, there is a simple and solemn ceremony in Jiangyin City, Jiangsu Province.

With the sound of a whistle, the volunteers who came to the Yangtze River port opened plastic bags one by one, dumped them gently, and fish jumped into the rolling Yangtze River one by one.

　　The Jiangyin section of the Yangtze River is a golden waterway rich in water and grass, especially famous for its rich "three delicacies of the Yangtze River": fresh saury, fat shad, and beautiful puffer fish.

Zheng Jinliang, a native of Jiangyin, lived here for generations. He has persisted for more than 20 years in the journey of saving rare animals in the Yangtze River.

"Three delicacies" are hard to find, protect river fish with heart

　　"Selling fish——" fishermen carried fish and shrimp on their shoulders and yelled along the village to sell shad, saury, river shrimp, and small miscellaneous fish. Friends touched clams with bare feet, released eels, and caught crabs... 1952 , Zheng Jinliang was born in such a small village in Jiangyin, Jiangsu.

　　Overlooking Jiangyin from the air, its terrain is like a plump puffer fish, with its head in the east and tail in the west, swimming towards the sea in the east.

　　Fugu is a taste Zheng Jinliang was familiar with when he was young.

He recalled that the "three delicacies" in the 1970s were not expensive: "The most expensive is shad, which is more than 8 cents per catty. The saury is cheaper, more than 30 cents per catty. The least valuable is puffer fish, which is more than 30 cents per catty. 1 hair more".

　　However, with unrestrained overfishing and pollution, the "three delicacies" have gradually become a rare commodity that is hard to find.

At the end of the 1980s, the price of Yangtze River shad rose first, and it disappeared from the Yangtze River around 2000. Yangtze saury, which was once the least valuable wild puffer fish, has also become a high-end product.

　　Zheng Jinliang, who lives on water, lived by the Yangtze River, opened a restaurant, and ran a company. The Yangtze River gave generously to his family.

Zheng Jinliang was deeply shocked by the disappearance of the shad. "Do everything I can to protect the ecology of the Yangtze River, save the fish in the Yangtze River, and breed the three delicacies of the Yangtze River, and vow not to let them go extinct." In 2000, Zheng Jinliang began to specialize in the artificial breeding of puffer fish and saury .

Overlooking from the air, the Jiangyin section of the Yangtze River is "a hundred ships competing for the flow".

Photo by Zhang Xian

　　Since 2004, at the turn of spring and summer every year, Zheng Jinliang will go up the river to "chasing fish", and trek for more than two months from the mouth of the Yangtze River to the Anqing area.

In the end, it took him four years to catch both female and male swordfish that were eligible for breeding.

　　"Saury is the most difficult fish I have ever seen." The breeding and breeding of Yangtze saury is a world-class problem. Unyielding, Zheng Jinliang creatively invented the "Guangjiang Namiao Breeding Method" and invested millions of yuan in repairing canals Build a pond, and directly introduce the Yangtze River water into the breeding pond.

　　In May 2007, Zheng Jinliang successfully bred more than 20,000 saury fry, which caused a sensation in the aquatic industry for a while. The myth that Yangtze saury cannot be cultured artificially was broken. people.

　　The protection of puffer fish is not an easy task.

At that time, wild puffer fish were hard to find. Zheng Jinliang drove thousands of kilometers and finally bought a group of puffer fish for 45,000 yuan.

At this price in Jiangyin at that time, one could buy a commercial house of tens of square meters.

　　Finally, in 2002, after many difficulties, Zheng Jinliang selected some seed players with excellent gonad development from his "seed generation" puffer fish, and bred hundreds of thousands of healthy puffer fish fry.

Raising fish by fishing, "old friends" return to their hometown

　　Breeding success is only the beginning.

　　"One of the purposes of artificial breeding is to release the fish, so that these fish can reappear in the Yangtze River." "Fish farming with fish" is a sentence that Zheng Jinliang often talks about, and it is also his way of raising fish original intention.

　　One day in June 2002, on a small boat in the Ligang section of the Yangtze River in Jiangyin, Zheng Jinliang and fishery experts and fishery administrators brought 400,000 Yangtze river puffer seedlings that had been bred independently since 2000 and 300 half-jin fish. The adult puffer fish on the left and right are released.

　　Over the years, rare fish such as puffer fish worth nearly 10 million yuan have been released into the surging Yangtze River time and time again.

In the eyes of others, Zheng Jinliang is pouring "real gold and silver" into the Yangtze River, but he has never admitted that he spent a lot of money. He only said that he relied on technology and low cost to send back the fish that belonged to the Yangtze River. mother river.

　　Pufferfish reproduction is a very inefficient business.

Zheng Jinliang explained that in the wild, a large enough population is a prerequisite for the reproduction of puffer fish.

Compared with the hundreds of millions of puffer fish fry in the Yangtze River, the millions of fish fry released every year seem like a drop in the bucket, but we have to do it.

　　If you want more power, you need more people to participate.

　　Every year at the release ceremony, Zheng Jinliang will call on everyone to protect the ecology of the Yangtze River and proliferate the release.

In 2008, Zheng Jinliang, who was elected as a representative of the Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress, successively submitted proposals such as "Protecting the resources of the Yangtze River and allowing the delicacies of the Yangtze River to return to the Yangtze River" and "The ban on fishing in the Yangtze River Basin is imminent".

　　In 2020, wild puffer fish fry were detected in the Haimen section of the Yangtze River.

The appearance of these small puffer fish with yellowish tails and "wild characteristics" is of great significance-under the background of the great protection of the Yangtze River and the ten-year fishing ban, wild puffer fish and other rare fish from the Yangtze River have returned up.

　　Soon after the discovery of wild puffer fish fry, Zheng Jinliang once again took out 400,000 puffer fish fry from the 600,000 he bred and released them into the Yangtze River.

Under his promotion, more and more units and individuals participated in the Yangtze River breeding and release. Jiangyin City also designated June 12 every year as the "Yangtze River Release Day".

The picture shows overlooking the city of Jiangyin.

Photo by Jiang Xuan

The protection of the Yangtze River will be passed on from generation to generation

　　When he was first exiled in 2002, Zheng Jinliang was accompanied by a six or seven-year-old girl. She was Zheng Jinliang's beloved granddaughter Zheng Bingqing.

Since then, Zheng Bingqing has not been absent every year since then, and the little boy with long hair has grown into a smart and beautiful young girl.

　　Influenced by her grandfather, Zheng Bingqing aspires to be the guardian of the "Yangtze River Fairy" just like her grandfather. Her dream is to be a fisherman in the new era and raise rare fish in the Yangtze River.

After graduating from graduate school, Zheng Bingqing returned to Jiangyin and applied what he learned from scientific research to farming practice.

　　In Zheng Bingqing's breeding base, puffer fish, shad, saury and other fish are bred. The breeding process has achieved 90% automation. There are drones, unmanned ships and automatic baiting equipment to improve the utilization rate of feed. Significantly improve efficiency.

　　In Zheng Bingqing's laboratory, artificial insemination is used to achieve large-scale breeding of puffer fish.

One fish can produce more than 30,000 fertilized eggs, and the survival rate can be maintained at about 80%.

　　More than 80% of the puffer fish bred by them are fed back to the Yangtze River, and some of them are supplied to the dining tables of the citizens, so that Jiangyin people can retain the good memory of the delicacies.

　　The river guardians with the blood of the Yangtze River rushing in their veins have guarded this ten thousand li river from generation to generation.

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