Fishy affairs

A change from the Financial Times, that is to say the MIT Technology Review, where the piece at reference 1 is to be found.

It seems that the Chinese eat a great deal of fish, but are very concerned about the decline of fish stocks in their coastal seas. Part of their response is the construction of hundreds of off-shore fish farms, with the large one snapped above being a combination of fish farm, research station and tourist destination. Some of them do power as well. 

With part of what they do being the construction of reefs, seaweed meadows and kelp forests for the fish to live in and the release of large numbers of fish - and other marine animals - into the surrounding sea. 

And then the fish farm operators suck in large subsidies. And the researchers have to tread warily between the operators wanting to make money, the Party Line - the chairman never makes a bad bet - and the truth. Yet another part of the mix is China building up its off-shore technology base. Including lots of robots.

It all works very well with sea cucumbers, which do not move around too much after they have been released. For which see reference 2.

On the down-side, we in the west have had all kinds of problems with fish farming, not least mortality, disease and pollution.

Work in progress.

PS: a fairly new topic for me. I could only turn up references 3 and 4.

References

Reference 1: China wants to restore the sea with high-tech marine ranches: China is the world's top fish consumer and is spending billions on technology designed to restock the oceans. But will this expensive experiment actually work? - Matthew Ponsford, MIT Technology Review - 2025.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_cucumber.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/trade-remedies-authority.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/03/river-cobblers.html.