To understand the distribution characteristics of the fish community and evaluate the effectiveness of the Yangtze River fishing ban, this study selected the Fuhe River (an important tributary of the Yangtze River) as the research area. A total of 30,892 fish (belonging to seven orders, 20 families, and 92 species) were captured in the upper and middle reaches of the Fuhe River from 2022 to 2024. Among them, the Cypriniformes order accounted for the largest proportion, with nine families and 66 species, making up 71.74% of the total number of fish. According to the relative importance index, Carassius auratus was the dominant species for each sampling period and each sampling area. Moreover, the number of dominant species in the main streams was significantly higher than that in the tributaries, while the diversity of the fish community in the tributaries was significantly greater than that in the main streams. Additionally, ANOSIM revealed significant spatial differences in the fish community (p < 0.01). Cluster and NMDS analyses further divided the fish community into three groups. SIMPER indicated that the typical species of each group of fish community were basically the dominant species within that community. Furthermore, RDA indicated that potassium permanganate, ammonia nitrogen, total phosphorus, and chlorophyll a were the main water environmental factors affecting the fish community structure. Compared to the fish community before the fishing ban, the stability of the fish communities during the initial stage of the fishing ban was significantly improved, and the number of fish species also increased. Therefore, the fishing ban was beneficial for enhancing the diversity and stability of the fish community. However, compared with the composition of fish species before the fishing ban, a certain number of fish species in the upper and middle reaches of the Fuhe River were still not collected during the early stage of the fishing ban. Therefore, the ten-year fishing ban in the Yangtze River still needs to be continued and implemented.
Wu et al. (Sun,) studied this question.