Distinctive cold-water fish farming settles into Gansu's high-quality waters

    Xinhua Net Gansu Channel news: In the wave-rippling Liujiaxia Reservoir, golden and bright red golden trout and rainbow trout swim happily in the net cages; in the clear waters of Nanquan and Beihaizi in Yongchang County, brightly colored brook trout and salmon compete for feed. Gansu Province uses pure, pollution-free, high-quality water resources to develop its unique distinctive cold-water fishery, which has become an emerging industry for increasing farmers' income.

    Gansu Province is rich in cold-water resources. With spring water formed by snowmelt from the Qilian Mountains, the annual dynamic storage volume reaches 1 billion cubic meters. The Liujiaxia Reservoir on the main stream of the Yellow River has a total area of 160,000 mu, making it very suitable for the growth and reproduction of cold-water fish. Golden trout, rainbow trout and other cold-water fish also require water quality to be pure, clear and pollution-free. The Provincial Fisheries Technology Extension Station independently developed a new golden trout variety and net-cage farming technology for triploid rainbow trout, developing salmon and trout farming on a large scale in the Hexi Corridor and the Yellow River basin, forming a plateau distinctive cold-water fish industry belt. Last year, the province's salmon and trout output continued to rank first in the country, with a total output of about 2,000 tons, including 75 tons of rainbow trout and golden trout produced in net cages.

    Last year, Gansu Province also increased the introduction of aquatic fry and fingerlings, expanded the coverage rate of improved cold-water fish breeds across the province, and adjusted and optimized the structure of aquaculture varieties. It transferred in 4.54 million fry of black carp, grass carp, silver carp and bighead carp from Hubei and other places; introduced 11.2 million fry of famous and superior varieties such as Shuihua Furong crucian carp and Furui carp to supply farmers across the province; and introduced famous and superior new varieties such as Pujiang No. 1 blunt snout bream to carry out farming in bulk freshwater fish demonstration counties such as Baiyin.

    Gansu Province improved the level of distinctive cold-water fish farming and increased fishery infrastructure construction in the Liujiaxia modern fishery park, renovating, reinforcing and desilting ponds, replacing all net-cage facilities with high-standard metal-structured net cages, and equipping them with fishery vessels, automatic feeders, camera monitoring and other equipment, raising the level of modern farming. At the same time, it expanded large-scale net-cage farming technology. Cold-water fish net-cage farming developed rapidly in Liujiaxia Reservoir, Gannan Prefecture, Tianshui, Longnan, Jiuquan and other places, with Liujiaxia Reservoir alone adding 100 mu of net cages. Last year, the province's aquaculture water area mainly for cold-water fishery reached 184,000 mu, and aquatic product output reached 13,800 tons, an increase of 3.8% over the previous year. (Reporter Wang Zhaoxia, Intern Sheng Jie)