THE amazing wild animals in Shenzhen Bay Park have been catching people’s eyes yet again. Following a popular video that showed a huge flock of great cormorants flying over the park, a short clip about jumping fish also went viral and has attracted national media’s attention recently.

The 36-second video was shot by Bai Jianqiu, a local photographer. Bai has captured footage of thousands of fish, most of which were mullets, leaping out of the shallow waters near Shenzhen Bay Park. According to Bai, the fish-jumping event in its entirety was about five minutes. The Morning News program of the CCTV broadcaster covered this piece of news Sunday and gave a thumbs-up to the quality of Shenzhen’s ecological environment.

Mullets are a type of fish found worldwide in coastal temperate and tropical waters, and some in freshwater. Its signature behavior is its tendency to leap out the water to surprising heights. This type of fish once before largely disappeared from Shenzhen Bay due to the poor water quality.

The Shenzhen government took a slew of measures to address the environmental problems, including setting up an ecological cofferdam, unclogging lakes, and replanting mangroves. With a fishing ban imposed on Shenzhen Bay since 2014, the quality of aquatic life has improved and the nearby fish population has been roaring back to life. What has followed is also the return of a large number of migratory birds.

Zeng Yongqian, a wildlife photographer, told Shenzhen TV that the variety of migratory birds and fish in Shenzhen Bay has kept increasing since he joined a professional team to photograph birds 12 years ago.

The data shows that Futian Mangrove Ecological Park in Shenzhen Bay annually hosts nearly 100,000 migratory birds in the winter. The number of recorded bird species is 255, over 20 of which are rare and endangered species. One example of these rarities is China’s first-level State-protected animal, the black-faced spoonbill. Shenzhen Bay is one of the major winter nesting grounds for about 10 percent of the world’s black-faced spoonbill population.

(Xia Yuanjie)