With an eye to the impacts of climate change, one of China’s leading seafood producing regions is offering lucrative subsidies to firms to kick-start innovation in water monitoring systems for the aquaculture sector.
Fujian provincial Ocean and Fisheries Bureau (part of the local government) is offering CNY 5 million (USD 743,385, EUR 661,581) per project to companies who will help construct a province-wide real time online monitoring system tracking water quality and temperatures across the provincial inland and ocean waters.
Also covered in the subsidy program are projects that use data to map disease detection and prevention. On China’s South Eastern coast, Fujian has felt the brunt of increasingly violent typhoons, which batter the province’s coastline every year.
Meanwhile, subsidies of CNY 3 million (USD 446,031, EUR 396,949) are being offered to firms to encourage development of medicinal uses of seafood products.
Other projects included in the subsidy program include gene mapping of marine species in the Taiwan Strait, according to a note issued by the provincial government titled “Management Method for Fujian Subsidy Funds for Ocean Economy.”
The government cash must not exceed more than half the sum put in by the biggest investor in each project according to the document. The cash handouts are grants rather than equity stakes.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
