Much of Fujian province is situated along China's southeast coast, including my current home city of Xiamen. Due to its location, many Chinese men and women earn a living by fishing. This past Saturday, while I was attending the Xiamen Boat Show, a fisherman in another part of Fujian province (Baiqing village in Pingtan) scored a really big catch. While out in the South China Sea, the fisherman netted a very large fish which turned out to be a gray whale. The whale turned out to be 13.9 metres (about 45 feet) long. Liu claimed that when he realized it might be a whale, he tried to release it, but it was already dead.
Sadly, gray whales are a protected species with an estimated population of about 20,000 left wordwide. They were hunted almost to extinction during the late 1800s and early 1900s. After being declared a protected species in 1947, their numbers grew substantially so they're no longer at imminent risk of extinction. According to this story, gray whales are not common in the waters near Fujian. However, catching them is still illegal in China and whether Mr. Liu's catch was accidental or not, it means there's one less big fish crusing Fujian's nearby waters.
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