The last records of Chinese paddlefish in the Yellow River basin and its estuary are from the 1960s, although the decline itself lasted between the 13th and 19th centuries.[1][2][3] In its main range, the Yangtze basin, the species has also strongly declined, but 25 tonnes were still annually captured in the 1970s. and it was still found in some numbers in the 1980s (for example, 32 were caught in 1985) and young were allegedly seen as recently as 1995.[4] Since 2000, there have only been three confirmed sightings of the fish alive, all from the Yangtze basin: The first was a 3.3-metre (11 ft), 117-kilogram (258 lb) female caught at Nanjing in 2002 and the second a 3.52-metre (11.5 ft) female caught at Yibin on January 24, 2003; the former died despite attempts to save it and the latter was radio-tagged and released, but the tag stopped working after only 12 hours.[1][11] The third and most recent was a 3.6-metre (12 ft), 250-kilogram (550 lb) specimen captured by illegal fishing on January 8, 2007, in Jiayu County.