“Cruising along Yangtze Mother River, Writing a New Chapter of Protection”, the Event of Support for Publicity on the Protection of Aquatic Organisms in the Yangtze River by Key Laboratory of Yangtze River Water Environment, Ministry of Education Ended Su

“A series of publicity activities on the protection of aquatic organisms in the Yangtze River: Shanghai summary day”, whose theme is “Cruising along the Yangtze Mother River, Writing a New Chapter of Protection”, hosted by Yangtze River Basin Fishery Supervision and Administration Office, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Areas, Yangtze River Water Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources, Yangtze River Navigation Administration, Ministry of Transport and World Wildlife Fund(WWF), undertaken by Key Laboratory of Yangtze River Water Environment, Ministry of Education, Tongji University was held at Fuxing Island fishing terminal, Shanghai on 12^th June. The Tongji University team, who undertook the task of science popularization, successfully accomplished the task and came back by the publicity boat.

On the reception ceremony and summary meeting, leaders and representatives from the  relevant entities, including the organizers of publicity activities, Tongji University, Donghai Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Central society and law channel, China Agricultural Press and National Aquatic Wildlife Protection Branch had a in-depth discussion on environmental protection and sustainable development of Yangtze River basin. The main topics included basic science and policy research, base and mobile platform construction, education and personnel training, joint publicity and action of Yangtze River Protection, etc. Secretary Jianxiong Liu and Vice President Zhibo Lu from College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University attended the event and delivered speeches.

“serial publicity activities on the protection of aquatic organisms in the Yangtze River” took the fishery administration publicity ship as a carrier. The Yangtze River aquatic organism protection publicity team consists of research experts, representatives of fisheries authorities, key representatives of scientific researchers from Key Laboratory of Yangtze River Water Environment, Tongji University and volunteers for popularization of science, etc, They set sail from Yibin, Sichuan on 21^st May.  More than 20 off-line activities were carried out in many places along the Yangtze River, such as special seminars on the great protection of the Yangtze River, public open days, field visits, proliferation and release and the number of direct audience is nearly 1,000. The number of online promotion and reading on microblog is 1.82 million and the overall people involved is nearly 60 million. The total sailing distance exceeded 2800 km in 23 days. Finally, they arrived at Shanghai's home port on June 12.

According to Dr Bojian Chen from Key Laboratory of Yangtze River Water Environment, Tongji University, who was in charge of science popularization team of publicity ship, the science popularization team consisted of 7 researchers from College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University. On the publicity ship, several young scientists gave full play to the Tongji spirit of "rigorous, realistic, united and innovative". They publicized the Yangtze River ecological health and other related concepts to the public relying on the public open day and social media. Also, they collected surface and deep water samples at 19 berthing sites of the publicity ship. The sampling sites included Jinsha River, Minjiang River and its confluence with Yangtze River, Three Gorges Dam, Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake. The sampling categories include environmental DNA and water quality, microplastics and organic pollutants, atmospheric enrichment sampling, etc.

The environmental samples collected during the voyage will be stored in the Yangtze River Environmental Sample Bank(YESB) built by Tongji University for a long time. Researchers will regularly test and analyze various indexes in environmental samples. Not only did this activity provide valuable sample resources for scientific research, it also provided valuable operation experience for the upcoming first sea trial of the investigation and experiment ship for Yangtze River environmental science from College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University.