After a gap of 3 and a half months, fishing has reopened in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea
At 12:00 on September 16, after a 3-and-a-half-month fishing moratorium, fishing fully reopened in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea of China. This marks the complete end of this year's summer fishing moratorium in China.
This year is also the 20th anniversary of the implementation of China's summer fishing moratorium system. How effective has this system been? How can we, while protecting the ecological environment, achieve the sustainable development of fisheries and increase fishermen's incomes? The author interviewed Zhao Xingwu, Director of the Bureau of Fisheries and Fishery Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture, Cheng Jiahua, a researcher at the East China Sea Fisheries Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, and Chen Yanping, a fisherman from Houshayang, Putuo District, Zhoushan City, Zhejiang Province.
The fishing moratorium has protected marine biodiversity and helped increase fishermen's incomes while cutting their costs
China's summer fishing moratorium system was built on the traditional practice of resting from fishing during the summer, and through local practice and continuous exploration and development, it ultimately became an important national system for conserving fishery resources. Since 1995, the scope of the national summer fishing moratorium has continued to expand, from initially being implemented only in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea to now covering four sea areas: the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea. In marine capture alone, this involves more than 100,000 fishing vessels under moratorium, including Hong Kong, China and Macao, China mobile fishing vessels, across 11 coastal provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), and more than one million fishermen under moratorium.
“After 20 years of development, the moratorium period has now been extended to two and a half to three and a half months each year, and the types of fishing operations under moratorium have expanded to all types except hook-and-line gear and single-layer gillnets in some sea areas. The summer fishing moratorium has allowed the marine ecological environment to develop sustainably and has also promoted fishery cooperation between China and neighboring countries. Over the past decade, China's marine capture output has remained at around 11 million tons, with nearly 200,000 motorized marine capture fishing vessels and more than 3 million people employed in the sector.” Zhao Xingwu said.
This assessment was echoed by Chen Yanping, a fisherman from Zhoushan, Zhejiang: “The benefits of the summer fishing moratorium for fishermen are obvious. In recent years I have clearly felt that the environment is much better, and there are many more crabs and shrimp than before. Everyone can repair their boats during the moratorium, and if there is time they can also travel.”
The area around the Zhoushan Islands is a famous fishing ground with extremely rich fishery resources. In Chen Yanping's memory, in the 1970s and 1980s local fishermen all used small wooden boats, but they could catch plenty of big fish every time they went to sea. After the 1990s, the boats were built bigger and bigger and the equipment became more and more advanced, but the catch was far worse than before. Common catches such as ribbonfish and yellow croaker became fewer and fewer, and the fish became smaller and smaller.
⟦NL> Capture-based fisheries are shifting toward being mainly aquaculture-based
“Summer is the breeding and growing season for major marine organisms. Through the moratorium, fish population numbers can be increased and replenished, marine biodiversity can be protected, and the trend of deterioration in the structure of biological populations has been initially eased.” Cheng Jiahua said.
According to the introduction, under the situation in which the fishing pressure on China's coastal waters greatly exceeds the carrying capacity of the resources, the protective effect of the summer fishing moratorium system is concentrated in resource species that have a certain population size and relatively fast growth rates. The most typical is the protective effect on juvenile ribbonfish, juvenile small yellow croaker, juvenile chub mackerel and scad, and the parent and juvenile bodies of shrimp and crabs. The effective protection of these four categories of fishery resources has sustained the foundation of China's marine capture output and played a “stabilizing anchor” role in safeguarding the market supply of marine aquatic products.
At the same time, more and more fishermen are shifting from a production mode centered on capture to one centered on aquaculture, and China's fishery industry structure has been continuously optimized. It was disclosed that in 2014, the national total output of aquatic products reached 64.615 million tons, ranking first in the world for 25 consecutive years; the national per capita share of aquatic products was 47.24 kg, more than twice the world average per capita share; and the per capita net income of fishermen was 14,426 yuan, 4,534 yuan more than the per capita net income of farmers.
“After more than 20 years of development, China has become a major fishery country with the most fishing vessels, the most fishermen and the highest fishery output in the world. But the overall situation is high quantity and low quality, the community and population structure is becoming more and more unreasonable, and the marine ecosystem appears more and more fragile.” Zhao Xingwu admitted frankly. For example, the proportion of traditional commercial fishery resources is declining year by year. Fish such as large yellow croaker, sea eel and filefish have severely declined and cannot form concentrated runs. Fish of the current year or one-year-old fish have become the main part of utilization, and many species are showing earlier sexual maturity. The catch structure is mainly composed of low-value catches such as small miscellaneous fish and miscellaneous shrimp, and the proportion of adult fish of traditional commercial fish species is further declining.
Coastal pollution remains serious, and fishery resource protection still needs to be strengthened
In fact, in the course of implementation, the summer fishing moratorium system also faces some difficulties and challenges. For example, affected by factors such as the decline of fishery resources and rising costs, especially during the moratorium period, fishermen's production efficiency declines; there are many fishing vessels, many fishermen and a long duration under the summer fishing moratorium, making moratorium management tasks very heavy, and most localities show shortages in law enforcement funds, equipment and personnel.
In addition, pollution in sea areas remains serious, causing reduced reproductive capacity of parent fishery organisms and reduced survival of juveniles; marine and coastal engineering construction projects have increased, occupying large amounts of breeding and habitat sites for fishery resources, and causing negative impacts on the marine ecological environment and the effectiveness of resource conservation.
How can we take into account the sustainable development of fisheries while protecting the ecological environment?
“First, we must improve and perfect relevant laws and regulations on resource and environmental protection. Second, we must strengthen control of fishing intensity and fishing vessel management, advance standardized management of fishing gear, continuously improve the moratorium and fishing ban system, carry out research on limited-catch management, and actively promote the transfer and conversion of fishermen engaged in capture operations. Third, we must continuously strengthen the protection of endangered aquatic wild animals and plants and aquatic germplasm resources, build a number of aquatic life nature reserves and aquatic germplasm resource protection areas, and severely crack down on illegal fishing, trading and transport of aquatic wild animals and plants and their products. We should develop marine ranches, strengthen the placement of artificial reefs, and increase the intensity of fishery resource enhancement and release. We must do our utmost to achieve the sustainable development of marine fishery resources, so that our descendants all have seafood to eat.” Zhao Xingwu said.