by Li Hongpeng, Jian Linjiang and Dong Qiufen, Guangzhou
Nutriera Group Co., Ltd, China
Large yellow croaker (Larimichthys crocea) is an important marine economic carnivorous fish, belonging to Perciformes, Sciaenidae and Pseudosciaena. It mainly distributes in the East China Sea and the Southern Yellow Sea, and a few in the offshore waters on the eastern side of the Leizhou Peninsula in the South China Sea, commonly known as large yellow croaker, the big king fish.
However, large yellow croakers were so severely depleted due to the heavy captureins in the 1950s and onwards. After peaking at about 200,000 tonnes in the mid-1970s, catches of the croaker in China declined by over 90 percent within two decades. Therefore, large yellow croaker was categorised as a “threatened” fish in the IUCN Red List.
Large yellow croaker (Larimichthys crocea) is an important marine economic carnivorous fish, belonging to Perciformes, Sciaenidae and Pseudosciaena. It mainly distributes in the East China Sea and the Southern Yellow Sea, and a few in the offshore waters on the eastern side of the Leizhou Peninsula in the South China Sea, commonly known as large yellow croaker, the big king fish.
However, large yellow croakers were so severely depleted due to the heavy captureins in the 1950s and onwards. After peaking at about 200,000 tonnes in the mid-1970s, catches of the croaker in China declined by over 90 percent within two decades. Therefore, large yellow croaker was categorised as a “threatened” fish in the IUCN Red List.
The extensive maricultural programme was introduced to address food supply and control overfishing in the 1980s, particularly of the croaker and was one of the earliest for marine finfish, not only as a nation with rich and highly successful history in aquaculture in China, but globally. With the vigorous development of the cultured large yellow croaker industry in recent years, the aim of this paper is to make an in-depth study on the culture situation of large yellow croaker in China.
Large yellow croaker production in China
According to 2018 statistics, the total aquaculture production of large yellow croaker in 2017 reached 177,640 tonnes. The production in Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangdong provinces accounted for 84.75 percent, 8.21 percent, and 7.04 percent respectively, as shown in table one.
Comparing with the production in 2016, it showed a dramatic increase of 17.54 percent in 2017. Due to the overfishing and low supply, the farming production increases sharply. In recent years, the consumption for valuable fishes are increasing with the living standard improving. As table 2 shows, price of large yellow croaker kept stably high around USD $4/kg. It’s estimated that the large yellow croaker production might continually rise in 2019.
Besides local consumption in mainland China, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong of China are also major consumers for large yellow croaker. Some hatcheries in South Korea and Taiwan have conducted trials of large yellow croaker breeding, but none of them have succeeded. Therefore, it mainly relies on the buying from mainland China to meet the local market demand.
South Korea is the largest importer of large yellow croaker and it imports about 40,000 tonnes of large yellow croaker from China every year. In recent years, Taiwan buys about 8,000 tonnes of large yellow croaker from the Ningde area yearly, mainly with chilled products. Hong Kong buys 3,000 tonnes of chilled large yellow croaker from Ningde annually. In addition, frozen large yellow croaker is also exported to the United States and European countries in a small amount.
Read more HERE.
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