Blue economy to sustain growth momentum

"Design work on the 11 km submersible has been completed, and (we) expect to have it ready by the end of 2021, and further make it commercially operational by 2023," said Wu Xin, chairman and co-founder of Rainbow Fish.

The private enterprise is also carrying out other commercial projects to make its business sustainable. "It costs us between 250 and 300 million yuan to develop the 11 km submersible from scratch. So we are trying our best to make both ends meet, and earn enough to spend on research and development," said Wu.

Wu said the dream is to help humans visit the deep sea, like some space projects that help humans to travel far away from the earth.

Just a few blocks away, in another building in the industrial park, Xie Ning and his partners are half way from materializing their dream as their deep sea smart fish farm has completed research and development and is about to start farming Atlantic salmon in 2021.

When eight young men majoring in ship design got together to discuss their ambition after graduation in 2004, they decided to do something to combine their specialty with the daily needs of Chinese people.

"We decided to go for deep sea farming, as there is huge demand and supply gap every year from Chinese consumers," said Xie, vice-general manager of Chonghe Marine Industry Group.

According to Xie, Chinese people consumed 64 million tons of aquatic products, among which some 40 million tons are through farming, leaving the balance 14 million tons to be met by fishing.

Chonghe is going to start construction of a deep sea smart fish farm, a 253 meter long and 44 meter wide vessel (platform) that is equipped with a recyclable water tank which can recreate the exact living conditions for Atlantic salmon.

"Construction of the vessel will start this year, and we expect to duplicate the vessel, so that each can farm 8,000 tons of salmon in the future," he said.

"Our industrial park grows along with companies. In the past 12 years, our position has upgraded from being research and development focused to the whole oceanic industrial chain, and thus is on the way to building an ecosystem of the sector," said Jin. She said that the industrial park will expand to 2 million sq m with more than 2,000 enterprises and have a combined revenue of more than 150 billion yuan by 2035.

Together with the developments in Lingang and the strength in high-end equipment manufacturing, technological innovation, research and development, Shanghai will also have a maritime equipment manufacturing and economic demonstration zone in Changxing Island that will have a batch of world class maritime engineering facilities like manufacturers of offshore drilling platforms, ultra large container ships, liquefied natural gas vessels and heavy duty crane barges, said Yu with Shanghai Oceanic Bureau.

He said the oceanic industry also includes resort and coastal recreation, ecotourism, cruises, shipping and marine bioscience.

"The integration of the Yangtze River Delta region will enable cross-region collaboration in ocean related resources of talent, technology, finance, projects and market sharing, so as to make the blue economy an engine of high-quality growth in the region," said Yu.