Introduction The 2020 Yangtze River ten-year fishing ban represents a landmark conservation intervention, yet its ecosystem-level effects within ex situ reserves for critically endangered aquatic megafauna remain largely uncharacterized. Methods We compared pre-ban (2016) and post-ban (2024–2025) fish surveys in He-wang-miao Oxbow, a designated ex situ reserve for the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise ( Neophocaen...

Deep-sea mining generates plumes containing heavy metals harmful to marine ecosystems. Assessing their impact on benthic organisms is essential. Traditional monitoring methods commonly employ acoustic, optical, and electrical approaches to investigate collective behaviors of organisms, while direct acquisition and in situ preservation of biological specimens during deployment remain challenging. To address this limitation, a n...