"I have never seen such a fish--it was at least three and a half meters long and must have weighed a thousand kilos!" fisherman Zhu Kaihong told the Dajiang Evening News. 

On October 1, Zhu Kaihong and his son were out in their boat catching crabs on Yangtz River when an enormous Chinese sturgeon swam into their fishing net.[Wuhunews.cn]

On October 1, Zhu Kaihong and his son were out in their boat catching crabs on Yangtz River when an enormous Chinese sturgeon swam into their fishing net.

When the reporter arrived, the fish was still lashed to the side of the boat, with heavy ropes around its head and tail and the torn remains of Mr Zhu's fishing net wrapped around its huge body.

Its tiny eyes and long silver-white bony-plated body could clearly be seen as Zhu and his son carefully pulled it up to the surface. "I am not short--I'm 1.75 meters tall, but this chap is twice my size" said another fisherman who had come to watch the excitement.

"This is the biggest fish I've ever seen in my 60 years as a fisherman. It's incredible!" said Zhu, trembling with excitement. He said he had caught a 400 kilo sturgeon back in the 1960s but had never seen anything of a similar size since.

"I felt the net straining," Zhu said, "and knew I had caught something big, but I never expected a Chinese sturgeon." His son said they were very careful not to hurt it.

Mr Hu, the director of Wuhu's Fishing Administration, said the fact that such a fish could be found was a tribute to fishing restrictions imposed in the Yangtze River area six years ago. Fishery staff examined the fish carefully to make sure it was unharmed before releasing it.

Fisherman Zhu Kaihong shows off the huge Chinese sturgeon that swam into his net in the Yangtze River area near Geji Hill on October 1.[Wuhunews.cn]

Just as they were about to let it go, the huge creature swung its tail and set the boat rocking wildly. Everyone was soaked. "That's the first time it has struggled since we caught it. Maybe it sensed we were going to release it," said Zhu. Then he and his son untied the ropes and gave the fish an affectionate pat before it swam into the depths of the river.

The Chinese sturgeon, which has a similar life-cycle to salmon, spending part of its life in oceans but returning to rivers to spawn, is a living fossil dating back 140 million years to the time of the dinosaurs. In recent years, pollution has threatened its habitat and numbers have dropped since the 1970s when around 2000 visited the Yangtze to spawn every year. It is now a protected species and has been designated a "national treasure" by the Chinese government, a status it shares with the Giant Panda.

(China.org.cn by Jessica Zhang, October 7, 2008)