China has stepped up its offshore aquaculture drive with the high-profile commercialization of trout pens in the Yellow Sea.
The “Shen Lan Number 1,” a 1,400-ton platform for farming salmon, was officially launched 2 July, as it was filled with 300,000 salmon seedlings. Docked off the coast of Rizhao in Shandong Province, the opening has received significant coverage on national TV news programs and has been hailed by some in China’s national media as an “historical breakthrough.”
The launch is a state-backed collaboration between Wanzefeng Fishery Co. and China Ocean University, alongside the Hubei Ocean Engineering Equipment Research Institute, which designed the rig. But the builder, Qingdao Wuchuan Heavy Industry, has been pushing hard and fast into the aquaculture space since it built a similar facility last year for Norwegian firm Ocean Farming, a subsidiary of the SalMar Group.
In fact, the Yellow Sea rig is similar to one launched last year by Ocean Farming in Norway. That rig included an offshore aquaculture mooring system with 250,000 cubic meters of cage space. The project was subcontracted to Qingdao Wuchuan Heavy Industry by the China Institute of Marine and Offshore Engineering, which was in turn engaged by British-based engineering firm Rolls Royce, the lead contracting firm on the project. Announcing the successful completion at the time (that system was tugged to the Frohavet salmon farm off the coast of Norway), Qingdao Wuchuan said it hoped to produce similar rigs for domestic Chinese clients.
The possibility of replacing imported salmon with locally produced stocks was meanwhile flagged last November by the backers of the project. Aquaculture in China’s Yellow Sea could produce “hundreds of billions” of yuan worth of seafood, according to professor Shuang Lin at the China Ocean University [Da Yang Da Xue]. Lin is one of the leaders of an offshore salmon breeding project underway in the Yellow Sea, in collaboration with Rizhao Wanzefeng Fishing Co. and Wuchuan Heavy Industry.
Deepwater cages 100 nautical miles offshore can produce salmon and trout to compete with imports, Lin said. Lin also heads the Yellow Sea Cold Water Group Green Aquaculture Science and Technology Innovation Project, a government-backed project to raise salmon in the Yellow Sea. Lin's endeavor appears to have joined forces with the Wanzefeng/Wuchuan project – the project launched with fanfare on 2 July.
Aside from salmon, Wuchuan has recently also won a contract to supply “integrated fish platform” to a silver pomfret offshore aquaculture project in the southern province of Hainan, which has signaled its intent to aggressively expand marine aquaculture with government subsidies.
Separately, Wuchuan recently also marked the launch of a refitted vessel which it hailed as “China’s biggest fish-breeding safeguard vessel” – essentially a large vessel for servicing the aquaculture platforms being put in place in the Yellow Sea.
Photo courtesy of Rizhao Wanzefeng Fisheries Co.
