2012年5月18日，本实验室与日本国家极地研究所合作的关于野生中华鲟游泳行为的研究论文“Swimming behavior of Chinese sturgeon in natural habitat as compared to that in a deep reservoir: preliminary evidence for anthropogenic impacts”刊登在Environmental Biology of Fishes期刊上，并在SpringerLink数据库在线发表。


Abstract: Unusually deep water due to dam construction has the potential to negatively effect endangered sturgeons, which lack a physiological mechanism to inflate their swimbladder and may be unable to remain buoyant under high pressure at depth. In a previous study, some juvenile sturgeons released in a deep (>100 m) reservoir lost buoyancy and stayed nearly motionless on the bottom. However, it is not clear whether this behavior represents a negative effect of the dam, because natural sturgeon swimming behavior is unknown. In this study, we attached multi-sensor data loggers to nine wild adult Chinese sturgeons Acipenser sinensis in an unimpounded reach of the Yangtze River, China. The depth utilization, tail beating activity, swim speed, and body inclination of these fish were monitored for 1–3 days. Fish swam up and down successively in the water column (mean depth, 9.9 m) with a cycle of 100-1,000 s during 64 % of the time on average, and stayed at depth, presumably on the riverbed, during rest periods. Tail beats were continuous (mean frequency, 0.77 Hz) throughout the records, indicating that their buoyancy was maintained. These results contrast with the previous study, suggesting that the behavior observed in the reservoir is unusual and that deep water poses a risk of losing buoyancy for sturgeons. Furthermore, all fish intensively swam (maximum speed, 3.0 ms-1) to the river surface at a mean frequency of 0.35 times per hour-a behavior that could explain why ship strikes are a serious cause of mortality in sturgeons.
摘要：大坝建设形成的异乎寻常深水环境可能对濒危鲟类产生负面影响,因鲟类生理上鳔缺乏气体分泌能力,以至于在高水压环境下鳔充气受阻而失去上浮的能力。一项前期研究表明，放流到水深大于100m环境中的幼鲟失去浮力并停留在水底几乎一动不动。但是，目前尚不清楚大坝建设是否会对野生鲟鱼带来的负面影响，因为我们还不清楚自然环境中野生鲟鱼的游泳行为。在本研究中，我们在宜昌自然河流段,将多传感数据记录仪安装在9尾野生成年中华鲟(Acipenser sinensis)背部,对它们的水深利用、尾部摆动、游泳速度和身体倾斜度等行为监测了1-3天。结果显示，在平均水深为9.9m的水层中，这9尾鲟鱼在每100-1000秒周期内有平均64%的时间在水中做连续上、下游泳运动，其余时间停留在河床上。整个记录过程中，鲟鱼尾部摆动是连续的（平均频率0.77Hz），说明鱼体维持了其浮力。对比之前的研究结果，在深水水库中观测到的鲟鱼的静止行为是不正常的，故深水环境增加了鲟鱼丧失浮力的风险。此外，受试的所有中华鲟都有以平均0.35次/小时的频率游出水面的行为（最大速度3.0ms-1），这种行为很可能是中华鲟受船舶撞击导致死亡的重要原因。