Abstract
The Yangtze River basin has been a major area in terms of icefish diversity conservation and fisheries. In the past two to five decades, however, the wild icefish resources have degraded continuously in both the brackish estuary and freshwater portions of the basin. Stocks have declined in all icefish fisheries, resulting in an annual fishing yield decrease from the maximum of 4,000 metric tons to less than 1,300 metric tons in this river basin. The stocks decline significantly (t = −6.74, df = 1, p < 0.001) correlated with icefish fishing stress in the estuary. Meanwhile, species composition changed markedly with smaller sized icefish species increased relative to the number of larger ones in terms of their relative abundances. Following the stocks decline and size reduction, icefish commercial value decreased to the point that 91.9% of the traditional icefish-producing waters (57 out of 62) terminated their icefish fisheries and some species became locally extinct. Based on the degradation process, we suggest that these changes in stock size and species diversity are the result of overfishing and habitat loss and degradation. We propose a number of measures aimed at the conservation and restoration of the wild icefish resources in the Yangtze River basin.
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Acknowledgements
This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30570290), Beijing Municipal Commission of Education (KM200610028009) and WWFChina (CN008804). We are indebted to the local authorities and fishermen for their kind and consistent help in the long time fieldwork, to Aldemaro Romero for his kind editorial help and to three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this manuscript.
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Wang, Z., Shi, J., Xu, C. et al. Degradation of icefishes (Salangidae) in the Yangtze River basin of China: threats and strategies. Environ Biol Fish 86, 109–117 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-008-9372-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-008-9372-4