Qinghai Lake, the largest saltwater lake in China, produces 50 million catties of fish a year. How big is the largest fish that has been banned for 10 years?

Qinghai Lake is the largest saltwater lake in China. It used to produce 50 million catties of fish a year, but now it has been banned from fishing several times. What's going on? How big is the largest fish in Qinghai Lake now?

Qinghai Lake is located in the northeastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It is one of the most important lakes in inland China. It is very important for maintaining the ecological security of the northeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It is also a particularly famous tourist destination in China. Every year, many tourists come to this lake. tour.

Qinghai Lake has two very special places. The first is that it is an inland lake but a salt water lake, which is very rare.

In fact, Qinghai Lake was also a freshwater lake connected to the Yellow River at the beginning, but after the continuous movement of the earth's crust, the mountains around Qinghai Lake began to bulge, and the flowing river was forced to block up, and the transpiration in the lake continued to strengthen. Too much water evaporates and the salt content continues to increase, and Qinghai Lake slowly evolves into a saltwater lake.

The second special feature is that the shape and size of Qinghai Lake are constantly changing.

The area of ​​Qinghai Lake has undergone a process from large to small and then from small to large. Qinghai Lake was originally a fault lake formed by the collapse of geological faults. At this time, the area of ​​Qinghai Lake was as large as 20,000 square kilometers, which is the largest area of ​​Qinghai Lake When it was the largest, due to the uplift of the mountain, the large and small rivers including the Yellow River could no longer be connected to Qinghai Lake. Qinghai Lake was forced to become an inland lake, without the supplement of water sources, and had to withstand a large amount of evaporation, so The area of ​​Qinghai Lake gradually decreased, and in 2005, it had been reduced to more than 4,200 square kilometers.

Fortunately, after 2005, some rivers near Qinghai Lake began to slowly flow into Qinghai Lake. Qinghai Lake stopped the trend of shrinking and began to slowly expand its area. By 2021, it has expanded by more than 400 square kilometers. . According to the research of relevant experts, the area of ​​Qinghai Lake will continue to expand slowly. Although it is difficult to recover to the peak period in a short period of time, this is already great news for the ecological security of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Qinghai Lake is the largest saltwater lake in China. It is deep inland and far away from the ocean. What special fish live there?

The fish in the early Qinghai Lake were brought by the Yellow River and other rivers that flowed into it, and these fish resources took root in Qinghai Lake. However, after Qinghai Lake gradually turned into a salt water lake, many freshwater fish could no longer adapt to this living environment, and gradually disappeared from Qinghai Lake.

Therefore, even though the area of ​​Qinghai Lake is very large, the diversity of its fish is very insufficient. At present, there are only six types of indigenous fish living in Qinghai Lake, including Qinghai Lake naked carp, Ganzi River naked carp, hard-thorn plateau loach, Among them, Qinghai Lake naked carp is the most important fish resource in Qinghai Lake .

Speaking of naked carp in Qinghai Lake, it has a very special relationship with humans.

In the 1960s, famine almost swept across China, especially the people near Qinghai were worried about food every day. At this time, the appearance of naked carp in Qinghai Lake solved this problem. People living near Qinghai Lake By catching naked carp in Qinghai Lake every day to fill his stomach, he successfully survived a national famine.

However, this is a disaster for the naked carp in Qinghai Lake. Due to people's overfishing, the naked carp in Qinghai Lake was almost eaten to extinction. You must know that the average output of naked carp in Qinghai Lake is only about 5,000 tons per year. In the year of the famine, the human catch was as high as 28,000 tons, and this phenomenon of overfishing continued for a very long time.

After realizing the crisis of Qinghai Lake naked carp, Qinghai Lake had to implement the first fishing ban in 1982, and even later listed Qinghai Lake naked carp as a national second-class protected animal, trying to save the tragic situation of Qinghai Lake naked carp condition.

So far, Qinghai Lake has been closed to fishing six times, the most recent one starting in 2021 for a ten-year period.

Thanks to the efforts of people and the self-healing of Qinghai Lake, the resources of wild fish species in Qinghai Lake, including Qinghai Lake naked carp, have been well restored and developed.

The protection measures for fish in Qinghai Lake have been quite perfect. During the many fishing bans, how big is the largest fish in Qinghai Lake now?

In fact, although there are six kinds of indigenous fish in Qinghai Lake, they actually belong to two genera.

One is Loachidae : these fish are generally small and slender, with an average body length of only a dozen centimeters, and a weight hovering around 100 grams.

The other is the carp family : the size of this fish is generally a bit larger than that of the loach family, the largest of which is the Qinghai Lake naked carp.

But even the mature Qinghai Lake naked carp is not that big, and it can't even be called a big fish compared with other fish.

Because the body size of fish is also related to their living environment. Generally, the more comfortable the living environment, the larger the size of the fish. However, for fish living in Qinghai Lake, they must adapt to the height of Qinghai Lake. Due to the high altitude and the high salinity of Qinghai Lake, there are very few other aquatic organisms living in Qinghai Lake, which leads to the lack of sufficient food for fish to develop, so their body growth will also be limited to a certain extent.

In addition, the warm season of Qinghai Lake is very short, so the feeding period of fish is also relatively short, and their growth rate is slower than that of fish living in other waters. In the same time, the size of fish in Qinghai Lake is Totally incomparable with other fish.

Judging from the current fishing data in Qinghai Lake, the largest naked carp in Qinghai Lake that can be caught weighs only four or five pounds, and this is the data that the naked carp in Qinghai Lake has grown for more than ten years or even decades. , the average weight of naked carp in Qinghai Lake was only about 1.2 catties in the 1960s, and this data may drop a lot after a lot of fishing.

Therefore, although Qinghai Lake looks very beautiful and the area of ​​the lake is very large, it is really not a paradise for fish. For the fish living in Qinghai Lake, every day is a test of their survival.