A finless porpoise appears in waters near Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing.

A finless porpoise is spotted in waters near Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing.

Several finless porpoises were spotted on the morning of Feb 26 at waters near the bank of the Yangtze River’s upper section close to the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing.

Among them, a large finless porpoise in shiny black popped its head out of water and played on the water surface just like a surfer, according to a Nanjing resident. After an interview, the reporters learned that this is finless porpoises’ estrus and mating season, and maybe these finless porpoises have selected this river section for reproduction.

The Nanjing resident introduced that several finless porpoises approached a small boat which was catching fish with fishing nets, and one finless porpoise put its head out of the water, then they raised their heads, stirred the water several times and generated sounds like sheep bleating to express their dissatisfaction with the fishing boat’s disturbance of their normal life.

"The sounds can be clearly heard from the river bank which is more than 30 meters away," said the Nanjing resident. "This is the first time for me to hear the call of finless porpoises in so many years," added the Nanjing resident who saw finless porpoises in the river for many times.

It is learned that the Yangtze River finless porpoise, also called "river pig" by local people, is the only fresh water subspecies of the finless porpoise family. The species, which is only found in the middle and lower main streams of the Yangtze River and the waters near Nanjing, has been living on the earth for 25 million years, but its population has greatly reduced due to the effect of the human activities. China has listed finless porpoise a kind of first-class national protection animal, and Nanjing has started to set up a finless porpoise natural protection area. People are paying increasing attention to the protection of finless porpoise.