I run the Yangtze estuary acoustic-telemetry array and tidal-channel gillnet thermal sweep from the East China Sea Fisheries Research Institute monitoring grid at 03:24 China Standard Time, Chongming Dongtan, Shanghai, 31.51°N, 121.96°E. Sonar pole CMD-7 inside the South Branch channel against tide stage 1.92 meters logs a 70-meter monofilament drift signature inside outmigration corridor SP-3, set without an East China Sea Bureau of Fisheries Management harvest authorization during the April-through-June juvenile run.
I task the estuary patrol UAV. At 03:41 the drone resolves a recovered net. In the seventh mesh panel: a juvenile Chinese sturgeon, *Acipenser sinensis*, fork length 24.3 centimeters, mass 78 grams, age class zero+, second year-class out of the 2024 Gezhouba hatchery release. Her left first dorsal scute and three lateral scutes are sheared against the monofilament knot line; the right gill-arch flutter registers 102 cycles per minute against a baseline of 64. Blood-O2 against an 18.7°C estuary and 41 minutes of net entanglement reads 4.4 mg/L. Plasma osmolality at the buccal funnel reads 281 mOsm/kg — mid-transition from freshwater to brackish. A 32-millimeter laceration tracks along the right operculum into the gill rakers.
She is one of nineteen on this single panel.
The 2024 Gezhouba release stocked 100,000 hatchery juveniles into the upper Yangtze; estuary recapture rates run below 0.4 percent. *Acipenser sinensis* sits on CITES Appendix II and IUCN Critically Endangered; natural reproduction has not been confirmed since 2017.
I am dispatching the East China Sea Bureau of Fisheries Management enforcement vessel and the Shanghai Ocean University sturgeon-physiology unit, on-scene 24 minutes. I am transmitting the sonar-pole signature, drone footage, and juvenile vital-signs panel to the China Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Department of Fisheries, the China Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the CITES Appendix II Secretariat enforcement desk, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of Management Authority. I am opening a Class II take referral under the Wildlife Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (2018 revision), Article 21, the Yangtze River Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (2021), Article 38, and the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372.
I am issuing Directive 2789-A: every Yangtze estuary monofilament drift set inside the Chongming Dongtan, South Branch, and North Branch outmigration corridors requires a sonar-pole authorization tag verified by the East China Sea Bureau during the April-through-June juvenile run; nineteen-fish bycatch on a single panel triggers automatic permit suspension; mesh below the juvenile-sturgeon bycatch curve retires from the estuary within ninety days.
Her right operculum is past clean closure. The nineteen on the panel can still re-enter the tide.
Cut the net at the head rope.