Soon.
Liu Sicheng was brought to the edge of the diving platform. Only after the fish swam away did he come to his senses.
Several people gathered around him.
Every one of them looked incredulous.
"Old Liu, what just happened?"
"Yeah, that looked like a huge fish."
"It actually carried you back."
"..."
What the Chinese paddlefish had done was deeply shocking to these people.
The Rare Animal Protection Department was a government agency headquartered in the capital. It was under the State Council, and its internal divisions included forestry and fisheries.
The head of the fisheries division was Qi Kaiyou. The matter of the Chinese paddlefish's extinction fell under his responsibility.
Qi Kaiyou had been very busy lately. There were 87 species of fish under national key protection.
Their division was responsible for protecting all these rare fish.
They not only studied and managed the fish's ecological habitats, but also reviewed information submitted from across the country to determine whether the fish in question belonged to protected species.
Some cases involved smuggling, others involved people who had caught the fish without knowing what they were, and still others involved people who had unknowingly bought protected fish...
Once they confirmed that a fish was indeed a protected species, they would either provide guidance by phone or send staff to take over the case in person.
There were all kinds of reasons these fish were threatened. Without proper oversight, they would eventually go extinct.
That was what had happened to the Chinese paddlefish, whose extinction had recently been announced. Its loss was a tremendous blow to the country.
So they had even formed a special research team to investigate why the Chinese paddlefish had gone extinct.
The research findings would later be incorporated into the scientific materials on the natural environment.