Fish species have been in obvious decline in the river over the past 15 years, with the number of species roughly halving since 2007, according to state news agency Xinhua.

“A survey of the mainstream of the river in 2008 recorded 54 fish species, mainly small fish,” Xinhua reported in April.

The Yellow River runs for 5,464km (3,400 miles), starting in the Tibetan Plateau and passing through nine provinces and autonomous regions to the Bohai Sea.

It is second in length only to the Yangtze, which is covered by a total fishing ban introduced in 2021. But the Yellow River has traditionally been less of a source of freshwater fish, contributing less than 0.2 per cent of the country’s total in contrast with the 60 per cent that the Yangtze once provided.