NOTES ON CLASSICAL LITERATURES AND CONTEMPORARY RESEARCHES ON THE FINLESS PORPOISE (NEOPHOCAENA PHOCAENOIDES)

The earliest record of the finless porpoise in the Chinese classical literatures was made in the book,《Shuo wen jie zi(To explain sentences and characters)》,by Xu Shen (AD 58-148?).The"Ju" ,the earlist name for the finless porpoise,was said to inhabit the middle reaches of Yangtze River and off the coast of Korea.About 13 names were given to the finless porpoise in Chinese classical works."Jiangzhu(River pig)"the most popular name for finless porpoise in China,was listed for the first time in《Jiang fu (Articles on rivers)》Published about 1700 years ago. The finless porpoise,Neophocaena phocaenoides, is distributed in the form of a narrow band along the coast line of tropical and temperate Asia including some rivers. It reaches the Persian Gulf in the west,the northern coast of Java in the south,the northern border of the Liaodong Gulf(41°N latitude, 122°E longitude)in the north,and the Sendai Bay(38°20′N latitude, 140°50′E longitude)in Japan in the east. Since 1829 when this species was described by Cuvier,studies on the finless porpoise were mainly taxonomical and faunal in the first 100 years.Morphological researches of the finless porpoise were begun in 1920s.So far,at least 130 papers or books has been published in various disciplines.Such as anatomy and histology,karyotypes,biochemical index of blood,chemical components of the blubber,concentrations of heavy metals and organochlorines in the tissues.MDH and ADH isozymes,parasites, ecology, underwater acoustic signal,incidental kill in fishing gears,and captive breeding. Anatomical and histological studies on most of the organ systems of the finless porpoise were published,Morphological studies will be more related to important phys- iological functions from now on.The published works on genetics and biochemistry were preliminary .Molecular genetic techniques such as DNA RFLP,fingerprinting,molecular hybridization and sequence analysis should be used more often in the 1990s.The conservation biology of the finless porpoise is also a weak link.Attention should be focused on the studies of population size,social structure,movement and the impacts of water pollution,incidental capture in fishing gears and other environmental changes on the finless porpoise hereafter.In order to estimate the population size accurately,the eco-logical surveys of the finless porpoise should be conducted on the Yangtze River and off the Chinese coast,and the methods used in the field studies should be improved. The present name,Neophocaena phocaenoides was claimed by Palmer in 1899.The differences in the skull between geographic populations was first noticed by Fraser in 1964.Although Pilleri and Gihr( 1972,1975)proposed to divide the finless porpoise into 2 and 3 species respectively,neither of their suggestions was accepted by most of the cetologists.Van Bree( 1973)and Wang et al.( 1989,1990)suggested 2 and 3 subspecies respectively. Based on studies on 218 external and 140 skeleton specimens and the polymorphism of restriction fragment length of mtDNA the present authors compared the differences between the geographic populations and showed that 3 subspecies should be recognized for the finless porpoise:Neophocaena phocaenoides phocaenoides ,N .p.sunameri and N.p.asiaeorientalis.We found that the finless porpoise in the East China Sea should be referred to N.p.sunameri instead of to N.p.asiaeorientalis as suggested by Wang et al.(1989,1990).