Figure | Zhu Li
Text | Xu Tengfei
China is the world's largest consumer of aquatic products, but its offshore fisheries have almost dried up, with boats catching mostly inedible small fish and trash fish – or "feed fish". In order to meet the demand, fisheries have shifted in both pelagic and aquaculture directions. Among them, the rapid expansion of the aquaculture industry has provided huge market demand and stable economic benefits for these small, poor quality and inedible feed fish, but in turn, this has further affected the ecological chain of fishery resources.
Fishmeal production began in the 1950s, when only the Shanghai Fish Factory and the Qingdao Ocean Fisheries Company's Aquatic Products Processing Plant had fishmeal workshops, which were mainly used to deal with by-products such as scraps, spoiled fish and low-value small trash fish and shrimp from processed fish. However, with the deterioration of the situation of offshore fishery resources, the proportion of forage fish in the catch is getting higher and higher, and the scale of fishmeal factories is also getting larger and larger, and gradually developing into a complete industrial chain.
On December 17, 2016, a juvenile brown calamus was stuck in a net on Shidao Island, Shandong Province. Brown calamus, also known as "false grouper", is a common edible fish in the coastal waters, and its meat is tender and delicious. The brown calamus weighing more than 2 taels can be sold for 30 yuan / catty, while this brown calamus can only be sold for up to 1 yuan and 1 catty as feed.
On December 16, 2016, a fishing boat was unloading at Shidao Wharf in Shandong Province. Shidao belongs to Rongcheng City, Shandong Province, and is named after "the mountains are backed by the sea, and there are stones everywhere", and as the name suggests, it is difficult to develop planting here. Fortunately, guarding the Yellow Sea, Shidao has developed industries such as fishing, shipbuilding and aquatic products trading, and the largest fishing port in northern China is located here.
Workers unload their goods on a dock on Shidao Island, Shandong Province, on December 17, 2016, and their catch is almost all finger-thick fish. Today, Rongcheng, to which Ishishima belongs, is the country's most important fishmeal producer, and one of the main raw materials for making fishmeal is this small, low-value, and miscellaneous small fish, which local fishermen call "feed fish".
Feedfish are not only recent, nor are they only found in the waters of the Yellow Sea. Pictured here on October 16, 2014, a catch from a trawler in the East China Sea, except for one adult band fish, the rest are forage fish.
Fishermen sort out their catches on Shidao Island, Shandong Province, on December 18, 2016. A small boat near the sea can generally bring back one or two hundred pounds of fish, which requires multiple workers to spend nearly an hour to sort valuable fish and shrimp from trash fish, garbage, seagrass and broken fishing nets, and the remaining feed fish is bought by the fishmeal factory. Over the years, fishermen and fishmeal factories have established a stable supply relationship, and the forage fish caught by fishermen is usually sold to the same fishmeal factory on a fixed basis.
On December 17, 2016, at the Shidao Wharf in Shandong Province, the sorted feed fish would be purchased by the fishmeal factory, and the freezer next to the wharf would be compressed into fishing boards and loaded into trucks for transportation to the factory. A pair of double trawlers of more than 30 meters long can catch more than 100,000 to 200,000 kilograms of feed fish in about ten days at sea, and it takes 7 or 8 such large trucks to transport them.
On December 17, 2016, in addition to the feed fish being loaded into the truck, there were also shark carcasses that were being unloaded as cargo, mainly used to process shark fins. Most of the sharks caught in the catch come from bycatch by fishing vessels, which are estimated to be around 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes per year, which is a non-essential death for shark populations.
Fishmeal factory in the Ishishima Management Area on December 17, 2017. Shandong Rongcheng's fishmeal production accounts for more than half of the country's total production; Rongcheng has 61 fishmeal factories, more than half of which are in Shidao. According to the owner of a medium-sized fishmeal factory in Ishishima, his factory can digest 600 to 700 tons of raw materials a day and produce about 150 tons of fishmeal, but due to insufficient supply of raw materials, the factory is actually "not enough to eat". In order to meet the production capacity of the factory, including him, many local fishmeal factory owners in Ishishima have formed fleets of boats to go out to sea to find raw materials for their factories.
Workers use forklifts to transport frozen feed fishboards into a processing plant at the raw material yard of a fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province, on December 15, 2016. These fish plates are compressed from thousands of small fish, pretreated, cooked, pressed, dried, crushed and finally become a dried protein powder, which is then used to make animal feed, such as fish, chickens, cattle, pigs and even mink.
A fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province, on December 15, 2016. Inside this fishing board are a large number of juvenile fish of food value, including striped fish, yellow crucian carp, and mackerel.
On December 15, 2016, a fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province, stacked feed fish plates awaiting processing. Fishmeal emits a large amount of wastewater during the production process. In order to rectify the city's appearance, in the past few years, Rongcheng has carried out centralized governance, closed and merged a number of small factories, and required that the remaining factories must be equipped with compliant sewage equipment.
At a fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province, on December 15, 2016, machines were crushing fish plates frozen from garbage fish and pre-treating the raw materials. In addition to the use of garbage fish of indistinguishable species, Fishmeal factories in Shandong also use a large number of anchovies as raw materials, which are commonly known as rotten from the water and old eye silver-gray small fish is the main food of mackerel and fish, which in the past could not enter the eyes of local residents, let alone eat it. However, with the decline of wild fish resources and the gradual prosperity of aquaculture, anchovies have become the best raw material for fishmeal and have begun to become the target of local fishermen.
Workers work on an assembly line at a fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province, on December 15, 2016. Including aquaculture, the consumption of fishmeal in the domestic aquaculture industry rose from about 250 000 tonnes in 1984 to around 800 000 tonnes in 1994 and to 2 million tonnes in 2014 due to the growing demand for feed in the aquaculture industry. In order to match the expansion of the industrial scale, the degree of mechanization of fishmeal processing is also getting higher and higher.
Workers bagging and loading produced fishmeal into bags and trucks at a fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province, on December 17, 2016. The fishmeal is transported to feed mills throughout the country, processed into a variety of compound feeds, and then resold to farmers to feed a variety of fish and livestock.
On December 17, 2016, a worker covered in fishmeal was at a fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province. Even in regular fishmeal factories, there will be a special taste mixed with fishy smells in the factory area, while those small fishmeal factories that are not formal, the workshops are often filled with putrid smells that ordinary people can't stand.
Workers at a fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province, on December 17, 2016. The owner of the fishmeal factory said that we are the largest fishmeal production base in the country.
On December 15, 2016, in the finished product warehouse of a fishmeal factory in Shidao, Shandong Province, fishmeal was being sprinkled from the conveyor belt on the roof little by little, piled up to a certain height, and then packaged by workers and sold throughout the country.
Women weave fishing nets at the dock on Shidao Island, Shandong Province, on December 16, 2016. In order to better manage fishery resources, China has introduced a series of fishery management regulations, including the prohibition period, the fishing ban area, the size of the net mesh, the type of fishing gear allowed and prohibited, etc., but there is still a lack of systematic control over the fishing and trading of forage fish.
Workers prepare fishing nets for use in different waters on a fishing boat on Shidao Island, Shandong Province, on December 16, 2016.
On December 17, 2016, a juvenile puffer fish in a fishing net on the dock of Shidao In Shandong Province. This pufferfish is an oriental pufferfish that is rarely used for direct consumption, so even if fishermen catch such fish, they will usually discard it or make feed ingredients. The resources of some high-quality species of oriental pufferfish (such as the redfin oriental pufferfish and the dark eastern pufferfish) have declined in many seas, so the management has also carried out breeding and stocking activities for these species in these areas with a view to restoring the biological population.
In December 2016, two small fish in a fishing net on Shidao Island, Shandong Province. What is the way out of the offshore fishless? Fishermen who eat by the sea say, "There are fewer boats and a bigger mesh, so that small fish can grow up and catch them, so that there is no good fish"; fishery resource researchers say, "Using alternative feed, or ecological farming, any fish and shrimp farming can achieve the use of 'zero' fishmeal feed"; artists who care about the ocean say, "If we don't just regard the ocean as our food source, in fact, the ocean can give us more."
On December 19, 2016, in the Fishmeal Processing Park on Shidao Island, Shandong Province, a former factory was overgrown with barren grass. The fishmeal industry has expanded rapidly and is becoming increasingly difficult to do in recent years. On the one hand, offshore feed fish can not guarantee a stable supply, on the other hand, the requirements for environmental access to fishmeal production are getting higher and higher, and many fishmeal factories in Shidao have begun to enter a state of shutdown or have been replaced by larger factories with more sufficient funds.
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Zhu Li, a photographer, graduated from Nanjing Normal University for a long time, has long been concerned and uses images to record the changes in China's ecological environment.
Xu Tengfei, a staff member of an international environmental agency from Urumqi (said to be the farthest city in the world to the sea), is engaged in protecting the ocean.