Saving Seafood

China leans heavily on subsidies to blunt coronavirus impact

March 2, 2020 — China is unleashing a new wave of subsidies to bolster the seafood sector, as it struggles with closed factories and migrant workers stranded far away from their workplaces due to fallout from the COVID-19 coronavirus.

China is waiving taxes and payments to seafood buyers who take up the supply sitting in the country’s aquaculture ponds, and the powerful Export Import Bank has offered up to CNY 1.5 billion (USD 210 million, EUR 195 million) in loans to distant-water fishing firms and processors in Fujian Province as a way to prop up the sector.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

This giant tuna just sold for the price of a new Toyota

June 6, 2016 — A tuna from Nagasaki, Japan, has been sold at an auction for the price of a car in the eastern Chinese city of Fuzhou, in Fujian province, according to an official media report.

The giant fish, weighing more than 100kg, was bought by a local restaurant owner for more than 260,000 yuan ($39,590) after 29 rounds of “intensive bidding,” the China News Services reported on Friday.

The cost per kilogram was almost double the market price, and the total sum paid could buy a brand-new Toyota Crown sedan on the mainland.

But the unidentified buyer was satisfied with the deal, saying that most tuna sold at Chinese seafood markets was farmed, while the Japanese tuna was a more a natural product.

Read the full story at Business Insider