"Living Fossil" Fish Making Last Stand in China
The half-ton fish are known as China's pandas under the water, but they'll soon vanish from the wild unless a new breeding program can save it. Third in a series on megafishes.
It's known as the "mother species" and the "panda under the water."
Yet the nickname that most aptly describes the Chinese sturgeon, a giant fish that's been around since the age of the dinosaurs, may be "living fossil."
Now conservationists are locked in a race against time to save this ancient river titan from extinction.
Adult sturgeons, which can measure up to 4 meters (13 feet) in length and weigh 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms), migrate from the East China Sea into the Yangtze River to spawn.
But the Yangtze's deteriorating environment and increased shipping traffic have taken their toll on the mammoth fish.
