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China Releases More Large Yellow Croakers into Sea
China plans to release 1.1 million large yellow croakers into the East China Sea this year to help increase their numbers.
The fry will be sent to the Zhoushan Fishing Ground, China's largest fishing ground, off Zhejiang Province.
The large yellow croaker has long been popular in Chinese as a delicacy. In the 1970s, there were 200,000 to 300,000 tons of them harvested each year, 90 percent of them from the East China Sea.
Overfishing in the 1980s, however, sharply brought down their numbers and nearly drove them to the point of extinction.
Specialists began to do research on breeding methods in the late 1980s in Xiangshan Bay, a fish breeding center in Zhejiang, and have since bred millions of fish fry.
Though the croakers have a cosy home in the bay, experts warned that long-term artificial breeding will cause degeneration of the species, saying that the best way to maintain their vigor is to release them in their natural habitat.
Since 1998 a total of 450,000 artificially bred croakers have been sent to the East China Sea.
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