In the northwestern Pacific, along the coasts of Fujian, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Hong Kong and Macau, and in the Taiwan Strait, there lives a precious creature worth millions of dollars, the yellow-lipped fish, also known as the money fish, which is endemic to China. The dorsal side of the body is brownish gray with orange-yellow color, giving people a golden glittering visual feeling. In addition to being regarded as a superior tonic, the swim bladder can be made into the finest fish maw, which can be sold for millions of yuan in the mainland.
Located at the confluence of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, Nan'ao Island was originally rich in yellow-lipped fish resources, and during the 1950s and 1960s, fishermen here in the coastal and inland bays sometimes caught this fish or found their dead fish floating. However, due to the deterioration of the ecological environment in the lower reaches of the rivers, estuaries and growing areas where the juvenile fish later inhabit, as well as man-made overfishing, the yellowlip fish is on the verge of extinction.
In the case of South Australia, since the early 1980s, the number of yellowlips caught each year has not only been very small, but also smaller and smaller every year. On April 9, 1984, fishermen in the hilltop village of Houzhai Town, Nan'ao County, caught a 1.8-meter-long yellow-lipped fish weighing 86 kilograms, which is rare in the history of fishing in the South China Sea. But in the past 10 years, not to mention the yellow-lipped fish weighing about 20 kilograms have disappeared, even the yellow-lipped fish weighing less than 10 kilograms are also rare.
In January 2011, a fisherman's net in Pingtan caught a yellow-lipped fish with a length of 1.93 meters and a weight of 150 kilograms. A fishmonger bought it for 1.5 million yuan, sold it to Changle fishmonger for 1.8 million yuan, and then sold the fish for more than 3 million yuan.
In June 2014, Huang Baicheng and seven fishmongers teamed up to raise money and spent 2.75 million yuan to buy yellow lip fish from a fisherman, and then transferred more than 3 million yuan to sell the fish to Xiapu and Zhejiang partners.
In December 2015, in Songmen Township, Wenling City, Taizhou, a local fishmonger bought a yellow-lipped fish from Myanmar, allegedly costing millions of yuan.