China begins annual summer fishing ban

BEIJING -- An annual summer fishing ban began on Sunday in China's major seas in the north, east, and south to conserve the marine fishery.

The fishing ban covers the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the waters north of 12 degrees north latitude in the South China Sea.

The fishing moratorium in the South China Sea is expected to end on Aug. 16. China has imposed the annual fishing ban in the South China Sea since 1999, as part of the country's efforts to promote sustainable marine fishery development and improve marine ecology.

For the next three days, the China Coast Guard's South China Sea branch and local authorities will patrol major fishing grounds and ports to ensure that the ban will be well observed.

After the middle term of the moratorium, they will hold three law enforcement actions in the Beibu Gulf, the Pearl River Estuary and the water border of Fujian and Guangdong provinces, in a bid to crack down on illegal fishing and protect marine fishery resources.

The fishing ban will end on Sept. 1 for the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea waters north of 35 degrees north latitude, while it lasts until up to Sept. 16 according to usages of different fishing nets for the East China Sea.

According to authorities in Qingdao City of east China's Shandong Province, the ban involves 17,000 fishermen. The city will, for the first time, hand out marine fishery resources conservation subsidies, which are some 70 million yuan (about 10.6 million U.S. dollars).

The agriculture and rural affairs department in east China's Zhejiang Province said that after May 8, the province would ban the sale of eight kinds of frozen or living marine products, including hairtail, yellow croaker, and pomfret.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security, and the China Coast Guard jointly held a meeting Friday about deploying special enforcement actions for this year's summer fishing ban.

The meeting strengthened the importance of patrolling and other law enforcement actions. It also noted that authorities banned nearly 8,000 illegal fishing-related vessels in 2021, the order of the summer fishing ban improved, and marine fishery resources continued to recover.