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Innovative technology boosts sustainable, ecological ocean farming in China

CGTN

The Jing Hai 004 intelligent cage in the ocean off Yantai City, east China's Shandong Province. /CMG
The Jing Hai 004 intelligent cage in the ocean off Yantai City, east China's Shandong Province. /CMG

The Jing Hai 004 intelligent cage in the ocean off Yantai City, east China's Shandong Province. /CMG

Huge nets filled with black rockfish are transferred from a ship to a truck at Bajiaogang port in Yantai City, east China's Shandong province. Soon, they will be on dinner tables across the country.

The fish come from the Jing Hai 004 intelligent cage 80 kilometers offshore and over 35 meters deep in the ocean. These deep-sea cages have created a high-quality wild environment for fish compared to traditional mariculture.

With the application of advanced underwater biometrics, the technology used to track the heart and breath rate, body temperature, decompression stress, and other metrics of divers underwater in real time, the growth of fish can be better monitored. The addition of automatic feeding also saves 85 percent of the manpower than traditional aquaculture.

An aerial view of the Jing Hai 004 intelligent cage. /CMG
An aerial view of the Jing Hai 004 intelligent cage. /CMG

An aerial view of the Jing Hai 004 intelligent cage. /CMG

There are currently eight intelligent cages like Jing Hai 004 in use across the waters off the coast of Yantai, and the annual output of each cage is more than 1,000 tonnes of fish.

This form of ocean farming not only boosts the area's annual yield but is also environmentally friendly and resource-conservative. Similar to the ocean farm zone in Shandong, the current national-level ocean farming demonstration zone can sequester 224 tonnes of carbon per square kilometer.

To date, 169 national-level demonstration zones have been established in the country. It is estimated that as of August 2022, the demonstration zones have generated direct economic benefits of 94 billion yuan (about $13 billion) and ecological benefits of nearly 178.1 billion yuan annually.

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