Sanya's fishery aquaculture forced to step aside due to the city's development positioning
Once upon a time, high-and-low-level shrimp pond aquaculture always accounted for half of Sanya's aquaculture industry. But as Sanya's pace of building an "international tropical coastal tourism city" grew ever more urgent and the effort to return ponds to forest and restore ecology continued to intensify, high-and-low-level shrimp pond aquaculture suffered a huge impact.
Haitang Bay Town and Yacheng Town are Sanya's traditional aquaculture strongholds, but due to the advancement of Haitang Bay development and Creative New City development, the aquaculture area has decreased substantially. In the Haitang Bay development zone in particular, the aquaculture industry must withdraw entirely.
It is understood that as of October 30 last year, the city had completed a total pond-to-forest conversion area of 2,108 mu, accounting for 100.05% of the province's five-year total plan, with a reforestation area of 1,656 mu.
To ensure the sustainable development of Sanya's tourism economy, last year Sanya made a major determination to rectify the marine environment, and the municipal government issued a notice requiring the fishing rafts in the Hongsha area to be dismantled by their owners. While issuing demolition notices to the Hongsha raft aquaculture households, the municipal government also issued a document requiring aquaculture households and fishermen in the Liudao and Anyou areas to dismantle by themselves the raft cages and other facilities occupying sea areas.
Zhang Huazhong, director of the Sanya Municipal Ocean and Fishery Bureau, said that due to historical reasons, Sanya had originally transformed from a small fishing port town into a coastal tourism city, aquaculture sea use had become tourism sea use, and the marine functional zoning had undergone a fundamental change, leaving a large number of traditional aquaculture fishermen with no sea to farm.
Industry insiders analyzed that most raft aquaculture households had converted from marine fishing, and with Sanya's development they face another conversion and transfer. They suggested that relevant government departments correctly guide fishermen to develop into the tertiary industry, so as to fundamentally solve Sanya's problem of sea use for aquaculture.
Proactively connecting with neighboring counties to transfer industry chains
These past few days, Ji Xunxie, section chief of the Fishery Section of the Municipal Ocean and Fishery Bureau, has been busy convening meetings with several seafood processing enterprises in Sanya. The purpose of the meetings was to find out whether, given the sharp decline in local aquaculture in Sanya at present, these processing enterprises could be "fed to capacity." The heads of the enterprises attending the meetings all said that relying only on Sanya's supplying enterprises, they could not maintain operations.
What was unexpected was that the enterprises attending the meetings all had aquaculture bases in Sanya's neighboring cities and counties to supply goods to the processing enterprises.
Similarly, last year, under the strong push of the government, aquaculture households and fishermen in the Liudao and Anyou areas dismantled by themselves the raft cages and other facilities occupying sea areas. These relocated aquaculture households could not immediately find better sea areas for aquaculture, and they all chose without prior arrangement to carry out aquaculture in the sea area of the Baipai anchorage in Sanya Bay. For this reason, the Municipal Ocean and Fishery Bureau even specially organized a law enforcement action for a special inspection.
These phenomena made the relevant leaders of the Municipal Ocean and Fishery Bureau attending the discussion realize that, given the sharp decline in Sanya's aquaculture area, consideration should be given to the transfer of industry chains.
"Emptying the cage to change the bird" to achieve industrial upgrading and a leap forward
Sanya's fishery development has reached the point where it needs to "empty the cage to change the bird."
"Facing pressure, we act early, plan early, and prepare in advance, taking industrial structural adjustment as the carrier, aiming to establish a modern marine fishery industry, and seeking rapid transformation," Zhang Huazhong said.
Zhang Huazhong believes that to change the current situation, first, establish artificial reef aquaculture focusing on stock enhancement to farm precious marine economic fish and ornamental fish, so as to provide sufficient raw materials for seafood consumption and recreational fishing in Sanya's tourism industry; second, vigorously develop recreational fisheries, such as recreational fishing and ornamental fisheries, hot spring fisheries, pearl production and processing, and shell carving and shell art; third, in marine fishing, actively open up the central and western Xisha fishing grounds. Continue to encourage fishermen to build large boats and venture into the open sea, strive for support from relevant departments for our city to build supply ships, and use fishery cooperatives as the organizational form to lead fishermen in opening up the central and western Xisha fishing grounds; at the same time, actively explore support for private distant-water fishing methods and strengthen fishery cooperation with countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Fourth, in aquatic product processing. It is necessary to closely combine the resource advantage of precious seafood with deep processing, fully integrate existing processing resources, break down regional boundaries, take effective measures to actively strengthen cooperation with surrounding cities and counties, form an industry chain in which raw material production, primary processing, and deep processing are mutually dependent, and increase industrial added value. It is necessary to adopt a strategy of simultaneously developing both international and domestic markets, and according to the demand capacity of different markets and different consumer groups, research and develop popular, mass-oriented green foods and organic foods to broaden the market.