Chinese Fishermen Call on Being Ocean Friendly

Today is Saturday. Yet it is the first workday for Chinese fishermen as a three-month fishing ban in East Sea and Yellow Sea of China came to an end.

One more thing that Lin Yongfa bore in mind today when he went out for fishing on the sea is a proposal: to be ocean-friendly is to be human-friendly.

Three weeks ago Lin and 19 other fishermen from Xiangshan County in east China's Zhejiang Province went to port cities of Dalian, Weihai, Qingdao, Shantou, Xiamen, and Zhoushan at their own expenses.

Not for exchanging fishing experiences, Lin and his team called on fishermen to be ocean-friendly throughout their journey. They even collected signatures of 17,000 fishermen from the north to the south along the Chinese seashore.

"I have fished more than 7,000 tons of fish during the first half of my life," said Lin, "I'll spend the rest of my life in freeing fries into and see and protecting fish."

Lin was chosen as a representative of fishermen attending an activity of freeing large yellow croakers fries organized lately by Zhejiang Province.

Lin could still remember how he fished some 20 years ago.

"We worked day and night," he recalled, "we have netted so manylarge yellow croakers that we hardly had place to store them."

Some fish were dried and some salted for storage. Such kind of excessive fishing, however, led to almost extinction of the fish in East China today.

Fishermen in different areas all tried high-powered fishing boats to net as much fish as they could, said officials with local fishing administrative department. Fishes rarely have opportunities to multiply.

What makes things worse is that the ocean has been taken as a huge dumping place as wasted water and pollutant were let flow into the ocean. Red tide was a result of pollution and reminded people of their offspring's future.

"We would not only break the rice bowl of ourselves but also that of our children if the bad situation continues," Lin said.

Xiangshan County owns the largest non-governmental fishing team in China -- fishermen in the county have more than 3,000 fishing boats.

China introduced summer fishing ban in 1995 to protect fishing resources and marine life. The ban was extended to be three months at the suggestion of fishermen in Xiangshan.

Over the past six years, none of Xiangshan fishermen has ever broken the ban by going out for fishing on the sea. Some of them voluntarily served as guards of oceanic resources. They abandoned some fishing tools that could kill fries. Some fishermen gave up fishing ahead of the national fishing ban. Some freed fries into the sea.

"If all fishermen take actions now at our proposal, I'm confident that if we are friendly to the ocean, we'll be excited to welcome back an ocean of vital force in the near future," Lin said.



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