The government of Zhoushan, China’s leading port for squid landings, is aggressively promoting increased domestic consumption of squid.
The east coast port city, which accounts for 22 percent of China’s distant-water catch, has been coordinating its efforts with China’s central government in a campaign to promote squid in regional cuisines, as an alternative to international sales. The percentage of squid sold in the domestic Chinese market has gone from 20 percent to 70 percent of the overall catch caught by Zhoushan’s fleet, according to a statement released by the city’s Ocean and Fisheries Bureau to promote a promotional event in Lanzhou, the capital of the northwestern province of Gansu.
The expo, hosted by the Ocean China Distant-Water Fisheries Association and the Ocean and Fisheries Bureau of Zhoushan, a government agency, is the latest in a series of similar events held across China. Representatives of a dozen Zhoushan-based fishing firms, including state-controlled ZhouYu – met with 40 catering and distribution companies in the city. A separate event organized as part of the Lanzhou promotion saw barbequed Zhoushan squid served up free at 15 stalls in the city’s night market, a popular food market, where grilled meats are a specialty.
Several Chinese cities, including Guangdong, have sought to build up their distant-water fishing fleets and infrastructure to process and sell their companies’ catch within China, and China’s governmental policy at both the national and local levels has recently emphasized increased transshipment of China’s distant-water squid catch. But data published by Oceana and drawn from Global Fishing Watch monitoring suggests massive illegal fishing by Chinese vessels for squid and other species in Argentinian territorial waters. Many of the vessels appeared to be operating with their transponders switched off.
A letter sent earlier this year by Latin American fishing companies to the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO) pointed to “a lack of sufficient control” of Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) catches in major processing and consumption countries, including China.
Photo courtesy of Leon Xia/Shutterstock
