Yangzhou releases ten million environmentally friendly fish into Shaobo Lake

    Yesterday, fishing sails dotted Shaobo Lake. The Gaobao-Shaobo Lake Management Committee released 10 million silver carp and bighead carp and 200,000 mandarin fish into the lake.

Watching the small fish leap lively into the water, Wang Youpeng, a fisherman from Daqiao Village in Gaoyou City, said with a simple smile: "Stocking is a wonderful thing. Not only has the lake water become clearer, but our fishermen's income is secure too! This year I caught a bighead carp of more than 20 jin in the lake!"

Small as the fry are, they are quite valuable. A single mandarin fish fry costs 1.2 yuan, so pouring in 200,000 of them at once costs several hundred thousand yuan. It is a high-value, quality fish, and a full-grown one sells for several dozen yuan per jin! Silver carp and bighead carp, meanwhile, are an "environmentally friendly fish," living mainly by feeding on plankton and aquatic plants in the water. One kilogram of silver carp requires about 8 kilograms of algae (dry matter), which considerably reduces the nitrogen and phosphorus load in the water and strengthens the lake's ecological capacity for self-purification.

According to reports, Gaobao-Shaobo Lake is the third-largest freshwater lake in our province, and a total of 1.6 million yuan worth of fry will be released this year, the highest of any year on record. Although the lake's fishery resources are abundant, the catch is not increased; annual fishery output is about 40 million yuan, following a policy of "zero growth." This not only maintains population balance but also improves the lake's purification capacity, keeping it at Class II water quality year-round.