China initiated a fishing ban on Asia’s longest river on Wednesday, as fishing was banned for ten years in 332 conversation areas in the Yangtze River basin, with plans to expand the ban to all natural waterways of the river and its tributaries by 2021.
The ban, imposed in a bit to protect the river’s biodiversity, was announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Yu Kangzhen, the Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said that the ban was a key move in fighting depleting biological resources and degrading biodiversity in the Yangtze River, which has been suffering as a result of overfishing, pollution and damming.
On New Year’s Eve, Xinhua reported fishermen watching as their boats were dismantled one by one. The move is expected to remove 110,000 fishing boats and 280,000 fishermen from the river. An estimated 100,000 unregistered fishermen may also be affected, according to the Chinese news website The Sixth Tone.
According to Xinhua, Yu said the fishermen could work as “patrollers and protectors of the river as members of the team executing the fishing ban”. The government has promised social security, financial support and vocational training for those who lose their livelihoods.
The Yangtze River stretches 6,300 km across China, originating in the Tanggula Mountains in Tibet and with its mouth located near Shanghai, facing onto the South China Sea.
Natural waterways connected to the Yangtze like the Dongting Lake and Poyang lake are also expected to face a fishing ban starting January 1, 2021. According to a report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), the annual catch from the Yangtze declined to less than 100,000 tonnes from a high of around 450,000 tonnes in the 1950s.
The four ‘major fish’ that are caught in China—herring, grass carp, silver carp and bighead carp—saw their population in the Yangtze decline by 90 per cent since the 1980s.
The Yangtze was among the 10 rivers contributing 93 per cent of plastic pollution to the oceans. Abandoned fishing gear was estimated to be the single-largest source of marine plastic accordng to a 2019 Greenpeace report, with 640,000 tons of plastic parts from fishing gear, nets and equipment entering the ocean each year.
660 million people live along the river, with the measure covering 11 different provinces in China and a total 8,100km of river section. In 2018, ‘spring fishing’ was banned in parts of the river to accommodate the breeding season that takes place between February and April.
