China’s Ministry of Agriculture, which oversees fisheries, has dispatched a professor from one of the country’s more renowned marine academies to advise one of the country’s largest tuna-fishing companies on how to reduce its bycatch.
Professor Dai Xiao Jie from Shanghai Ocean University spent a day recently with crew and management at Dalian Yuan Yang Tuna Yu Ye Co. (which sometimes uses the English name China Tuna), where he spoke of how the company’s two dozen trawlers could be responsible players in the Pacific.
Stressing the ministry’s goal to “improve the quality and development” of China’s overseas fishing, Dai told skippers and company bosses they need to keep complete and up-to-date records of catches when operating in the Pacific. China needs to show it’s able to show the “responsibility and duty” to sustainability befitting a “big fishing nation,” said Dai.
Crew on Dalian Yuan Yang vessels showed Dai some of the 600 tuna on one vessel, measuring them for the camera to show they’re of a catchable size. The demonstration and training day took place on a pier owned by LiaoYu Group, the state-owned processing and fleet operating giant. Established only in 2000, Dalian Yuan Yang Tuna Yu Ye Co claims to be the largest ultra-low temperature longline premium tuna-fishing company in China in revenue and sales volume and the largest in fleet size.
