China wants to restore the sea with high-tech marine ranches

Chinese universities are world leaders in applied sciences, Agricultural research to materials science. But Neil Loneragan, chairman of the Malaysian Asian Fisheries Association and emeritus professor of marine sciences at Australia’s Murdoch University, said that in China’s “quite unique” research and development environment, basic questions are not always easy to answer.

Lonaragan said the central government’s controlling influence on ranching development meant researchers had to walk a tightrope between their two bosses: academic directors and party committees. Marine biologists want to understand the basics, “but researchers have to put a spin on it to show the economic return to industry and therefore the benefits that governments receive from their investment,” he said.

Many efforts aim to address known problems in the life cycles of captive fish, such as insufficient reproductive rates or the difficult survival odds of juvenile fish when they reach the ocean. Research shows that fish in their early stages of life are particularly vulnerable to environmental fluctuations Examples include storms and recent marine heat waves.

One of the most radical solutions Wu Zhongxin is testing is to improve the health of animals before they are released from breeding ponds into the wild. Currently, fish are simply scooped up in oxygenated plastic bags and raised free-range in marine nurseries, Wu said, but it’s clear many of the fish are weak or lack survival skills. In response, his team is developing a “field training” tool. “The main method is swimming training,” he said. In effect, the young fish are forced to swim against the current on a kind of aquatic treadmill to help them adapt to the demands of the wild. Another technique involves changing water temperatures and introducing some other species to prepare them for the seagrass and kelp forests they’ll encounter in the outside world, he said.

Better methods of habitat enhancement are most likely to improve the efficiency of sea ranching, Wu said. Today, most ranches use precast concrete structures installed in 20 meters of water to create a seafloor environment, often with a rough surface to support coral or algae growth. China’s typical ranch goal is 30,000 cubic meters of artificial reefs; The pasture area of ​​the protected area around Centipede IslandFor example, 1,000 poured concrete reef structures were placed around the coast of a tropical island. Fish populations have increased tenfold in the past decade.