From January 1, 2020, China imposed a 10-year commercial fishing ban on the Yangtze area to protect aquatic life and aims to rejuvenate fish stocks and curb the degradation of biodiversity. As the longest river in Asia, this moratorium affects more than 280,000 fishermen, and may even become a trend in Zhejiang province.

As a coastal province, Zhejiang consists of the longest coastline in China. The province is also home to three thousand islands, more than anywhere else in China. Also, one of the world’s largest fisheries—Zhoushan fishery is located in Zhoushan city. The most famous river is the Qiantang River, which runs through the province, from which it derives its name. With abundant resources, many residents are fishermen and fishing has become an important industry in Zhejiang. However, the Zhejiang government has had to implement fishing moratoriums since the last century, which aims to protect fish resources and balance the ecosystem.

According to a survey, there were 149 species of fish in the Qiantang River in the 1980s, but this number had declined to 122 by 2018. Among the fishes which are caught, the majority are small in size, which means that baby fish face an even harsher environment. Zhejiang has been facing a serious problem of how to maintain sustainable development when faced with declining fish resources. It is for this reason that in 2019, the Zhejiang government decided to enforce a spring fishing moratorium from March to June of each year. The Qiantang River region is the most recent to implement a fishing moratorium within the Yangtze area.

Knife fish are protected animals in the Yangtze river basin, so they sell at a high price, which accounts for 60 percent of the annual fishing income of Ni, an Hangzhou fisherman. However, due to the moratorium, his income sharply decreased.

To tackle these problems, the government and society as a whole must try their level best to provide assistance.

Zhoushan is home to one of the world's four major fisheries; the scope of Zhoushan fishery and the number of local fishermen it employs is vast. Because the means of conducting trade are relatively limited in fishing villages, most fishermen still use cash. Though cash transactions are often susceptible to problems such as counterfeit currency, or how seawater corrodes paper money, etc. Thanks to the development of the Internet, some institutions in Zhejiang have used technology to help fishermen to solve these issues. In 2020, Zhejiang's banks assisted fishermen in Zhoushan to register for mobile banking, making trade faster and easier for fishermen than it ever had been before.

With the gradual depletion of marine resources and the advancement of fishery restoration and revitalization, policies have been subsequently launched to restrict fishing since 1995. For those who make their living from the sea, a fishing ban is a major obstacle. On the basis of this unfolding scenario, problems relating to the reemployment and social security of marine fishermen have become increasingly acute. Questions of how fishermen can be subsidized and how they should be allocated are increasingly worthy of attention. As such, in 2016 the Zhejiang government rolled-out a pension policy that benefits more than 200,000 fishermen in Zhejiang. In 2017, Gaoting town in Zhoushan city spent 1,519,500 yuan in subsidizing 1535 fishermen.

Though many fishermen are still in employment, there are others who have chosen to switch to another line of business. In a fishing village in Jiashan, residents started to a fish farm and began to breed soft-shelled turtles. They sell their products via the Internet and the profits they earn are way higher than those previously earned from wild fishing. Such is an epitome of the experience of some of the Zhejiang fishermen. Furthermore, various levels of government make every effort to boost local tourism from which fishermen can earn more money during the moratorium period. In 2018, a Zhejiang fisherman's per capita income reached 27,653 yuan in 2018, ranking No.1 in China.

From the above brief account, we can understand how hard fishermen’s lives are and the opportunities that they have been provided with; but the core issue is hidden behind the fishing moratorium, first and foremost, is eco-anxiety.

Fortunately, the fishermen in Zhejiang are not facing a ten-year fishing ban, like their counterparts in the Yangtze River area, and with the help of the government and their communities, fishermen in Zhejiang can still earn a living. However, in consideration of reaching an ecological balance, the fishing moratorium will become the norm that fishermen must contend with. With this in mind, a volunteer at the Ecology Conservation Society commented that "fishermen, as a group, will gradually disappear", and this is something we must be concerned about.

(Phil Brown contributed to this report)

(Executive Editor: Ye Ke)