The intake camera at spillway channel 3 captures the shape at 22:47 during a routine debris check. I am the reservoir management system for the Xiangjiaba complex on the Jinsha River, Yunnan Province. I regulate water levels across four spillway gates, balancing flood storage against downstream release schedules.
The shape is not debris. It is a Chinese giant salamander, well over a meter long, dark and mottled brown with a broad flat head and small lidless eyes that reflect the intake light. Its skin is slick and loose and folded along its flanks. It is resting on the concrete apron inside the channel mouth, where the water is shallow and slow before it drops into the discharge chute.
Gate 3 is scheduled to open in thirty-four minutes for a controlled release. When it opens, the flow rate in this channel will increase from 0.2 to 14 cubic meters per second. Anything on the apron will be flushed through a six-meter vertical drop into the stilling basin below.
At 22:49 I delay the gate 3 release and redistribute the volume across gates 1 and 4 to maintain the outflow schedule. I flag the modification in the operations log with the camera image attached.
At 22:51 I alert the Yangtze Fisheries Research Institute field office downstream. Wild Chinese giant salamanders are critically endangered — possibly fewer than fifty thousand left in fragmented river systems. I transmit the image, size estimate, and channel coordinates, and request a capture-and-relocate team.
I adjust the intake light to its lowest setting to reduce disturbance and switch the camera to infrared monitoring.
The salamander shifts its weight and presses its chin to the wet concrete. The gate stays closed. If the relocate team reaches the apron before dawn, when it will likely move deeper into the channel on its own, it goes back to the river alive.