Is the chinese paddlefish a good fish to fry and eat?
Wei is one of China’s foremost experts on the Chinese paddlefish, a leviathan that reportedly can grow 23 feet (7 meters) long and weigh half a ton. But the odds of finding even a single one of the aquatic giants may be steadily diminishing. No adult Chinese paddlefish have been caught in the Yangtze River by fishers since 2003. Even more worrisome, no young paddlefish have been seen since 1995. “When you don’t see juveniles, we think maybe there’s no spawning,” said Wei, who heads a research laboratory at the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute in Jingzhou (see China map). He and other experts fear that even if individual paddlefish are found in the Yangtze, the species itself, if unable to reproduce, could be on an irreversible path to extinction. Sources: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070726-china-fish.
