Aquaculture production in Hainan – one of China’s key tilapia-producing regions – has fallen drastically in the wake of a major typhoon that occurred in early September, with mass power outages on farms, causing huge mortality figures.
Typhoon Yagi slammed into the coast of Hainan on 6 September with wind speeds reaching nearly 140 miles per hour, making it the most powerful storm to hit the region in a decade.
Josephine Wang, an export sales manager at tilapia-farming firm Hainan Golden Spring Foods, told SeafoodSource the damage has been devastating for farms in the area, with some reporting a 50 percent slash in production.
“A lot of fish died because of lack of oxygen, and a lot of fish died from disease. With no power, you know how hard it would be for farming," she said.
Making matters worse, Yagi rolled through Hainan at a time when the industry was enjoying an upturn in market demand, Wang said.
“The market for this year is quite good; we got full orders for the rest of the year in early August, which is so different from, at least, [the last] five years,” she said. “However, the challenge of fulfilling these contracts is huge now because northern Hainan was hit badly. Yagi destroyed almost the entire power supply network.”
This devastation has led to a difficult cleanup effort, she said.
“Besides the 20,000 electricians locally, there are around 30,000 electricians [being] sent from other provinces like Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, and more to support Hainan's restoration of power supply,” she said. “Even with so many backups, until this moment, there are still places waiting for power [to come] back.”
Didier Boon, whose Beijing-based East China Seas company sources tilapia, described the typhoon as a disaster not only for tilapia farming, but also vannamei shrimp. He he has had to cancel 20 containers’ worth of shrimp shipments in the wake of Yagi.
“This [did] not affect Hainan only but also the tip of south China where Zhanjiang lies,” he told SeafoodSource, referring to the major vannamei production area just north of Hainan. “Farmgate prices and lack of materials affect the whole market, not only Hainan.”
The shortage of Chinese tilapia is being compounded by a U.S. import alert issued against Hainan Eternal Springs Fisheries Co. for excessive levels of chloramphenicol in June 2024. The shortage may impede efforts of Hainan-based firms like Golden Spring and Amyco Foods, to seek new export markets.
