Since early June, Shandong province has been releasing large numbers of baby fish into the ocean in a bid to restore the fishery resources of Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea.

This year, Shandong is scheduled to release 3.91 billion baby fish of all kinds, establish 10 artificial reef areas as well as seven fishery resource protection areas and 190 deepwater cages, all estimated at an investment of 350 million yuan.

On June 7, the Qingdao Ocean and Fishery Bureau released 560 million baby fish and shrimp seedlings; on June 13, Shandong Seawater Institute released 30 million jellyfish seedlings in Qingdao; on June 18, Rizhao released over 10 million baby fish of various kinds into Yellow Sea, including prawn, portunid and jellyfish. On the same day, Weihai released over 12 million units of various baby fish including penaeus chinensis, Penaeus japonicus and swimming crab. Other coastal cities like Yantai, Dongying, and Weifang also did the same.

With a coastline stretching more than 3,000 km, Shandong is one of the major fishery areas in China. Yet, due to water pollution and overfishing in the province in the 1980s, its offshore fishery resources have declined by a large degree This has seriously endangered fishery production and affected its marine ecological balance.

To overcome this problem, Shandong province pioneered a fishery resource restoring initiative in China in 2005, with a total investment of 1.42 billion yuan.

According to Huang Yusong, director general of the Qingdao Ocean and Fisheries Bureau, Qingdao has released 1.3 billion units of various types of fish babies since 2005, with a total investment of 21.19 million yuan.

Weihai has released 2 billion units of aquatic babies and built an artificial reef with an area of 10,005 hectares.

To date, the province has released some 30 varieties of valuable aquatic infants, including penaeus chinensis, Penaeus japonicus, sea cucumber, abalone, crab, jellyfish, flounder and black sea bream. The province’s efforts have paid off. Its offshore fishery resources and population quantity have increased. A number of aquatic products including prawn, jellyfish and crab has provided a good fishing season.

Over the five years since the measure was first taken, Shandong has recaptured the proliferation of marine resources of 180,000 tons, with the production value of 4.9 billion yuan. The direct input-output ratio is 1:17.

By Ju Chuanjiang and Wang Qian (China Daily Shandong Bureau)