By Wang Jin

Chines fishing vessel manufacturing industry gradually became rational and standard in 2017 after years’ cooling down. Many memorable events will certainly cause major influence on the development of fishing vessel equipment.

Policy Planning Focuses on Development Quality

In 2017, policy planning associated with fishing vessels was intensively launched, providing most effective basis for the fishing vessel manufacturing industry finding its own position.

“The 13th Five-Year Plan for the National Fishery Development”published at the beginning of 2017 was an important plan for fishery development.The most important is two control goals of fishing vessel investment and catch yield. On one hand, the country will reduce marine fishing motor vessels by 20,000 and power by 1.5 million kW by 2020, will not newly build or import fishing vessels for production in the waters under Chinese jurisdiction in addition to eliminating old ships for reconstruction and transformation and renovation. On the other hand, domestic marine fishing will practice negative growth policy, total domestic marine fishing yield will be decreased to below 10 million tons by 2020, down more than 3.09 million tons in relation to 2015.

In deep-sea fishing, “The 13th Five-Year Plan for the National Fishery Development” issued by the Ministry of Agriculture requires the national deepsea fishing vessel number to be stabilized within 3,000 vessels by 2020 and the number of deep-sea fishing enterprise will maintain a “zero growth” on the basis of 2016. This delimits two important red lines for properly adjusting deep-sea fishing development rhythm. Under the goal, the number of Chinese deep-sea fishing vessel number has no growth room by and large.

However, fishing vessel renewal and renovation still plays an important space in the plans. For the purpose of safeguarding smooth implementation of Chinese fishing vessel standardization renewal and renovation, the Ministry of Agriculture distributed “Fishing Standard Ship Type Evaluation Method (on a trial basis)” in this February. By end-2017, coastal areas have generally formulated and issued implementation schemes for evaluation standard and published standard ship type evaluation results(standard ship type catalog).

Technical Innovation Creates High-End Equipment

High-end fishing vessel construction, special equipment localization and new technologies adaptable to new business formats of fishery will be hot spots for future development of fishery equipment.Domestic research institutions and enterprises have made new breakthroughs in fishing vessel R&D in one year.

China’s first Antarctic krill vessel project made positive progress in 2017.the high-end fishing vessel is required for high-efficient fishing, pipeline processing and packaging treatment in the Southern Ocean to meet CCAMLR and IMO special environmental requirements for the Southern Ocean.Due to high threshold of R&D and construction and many difficulties in marine equipment supply, Antarctic krill vessel has been regarded as a ship type with construction far more difficult that ordinary merchant ships, single ship cost may top RMB1 billion. Turning drawing into reality will be a major breakthrough in Chinese fishing vessel design and construction and will play a positive role in boosting high-end fishing vessel and marine equipment development.

New energy technology of fishing vessel sees new development. The 6.6m pure electric FRP farmed fishing vessel jointly developed by Dalian relevant enterprises, research institutes and universities passed test verification and reached the requirement for pilot application and construction popularization. Tianjin University project team and Zibo Diesel Power Co Ltd jointly carried out methanol fuel diesel engine bench test, and analyzed technical feasibility of methanol application onboard a fishing vessel.Data monitoring shows main engine power remains unchanged with oil consumption decline after methanol partly replaces diesel.

Norwegian Maritime Fisheries Project contracted by the Hubei Marine Engineering Equipment Research Institute Co Ltd was successfully delivered last June. The intelligent fishing ground diameter is 110m, total height is 69m, light weight is 7693t,able to resist typhoon 12, service life is 25 years, design manning is 7 men, 1.5 million fish cultivation can be realized at one time, and it is the global first R&D project integrating Norwegian advanced cultivation technology, modern environment-friendly cultivation concept and world top class offshore engineering design.

Boosting fishery transformation and upgrade requires overcoming shortcomings of fishery auxiliary vessel.In 2017, a number of pelagic fishery carriers were completed, such as China’s first ultra-low temperature tuna cold-storage boat “Ping Tai Rong Leng 1”, more than 8000 dwt“Jinzhou”deep-sea fishery carrier. Overall length of such ship type is generally 60-165m, with high requirements for navigational speed, safety, seaworthiness,transshipment and other properties. The critical hold refrigerating system has not only big power, but also very high automation degree.

In addition, fishery resource survey ship system construction is on a fast track. In 2017 before China’s first 3000t deep-sea fishery resource survey ship “Song Hang” was built and put into operation, a number of 300t fishery resource survey ships had been delivered.

Diversified Integration for Tapping Market Accommodation

Fisher production increasingly stresses on eco-friendly and sustainable development path, which requires fishing vessel supply should conform to demand variation and set out for the main battlefield of green development.

Stepped-up effort in fishing vessel renewal and renovation is the brightest spot. Last December, nine 62.8m steel trawl ocean fishing vessels built by a Guangdong ship enterprise were smoothly delivered. Despite the first time to build a fishing vessel, the ship enterprise actively adapted to the trend of fishing vessel upgrading, gave full play to its own technical advantages to get orders and ensured the delivery of the fishing vessels on schedule and with quality guaranteed. Aiming at stable demand formed by renewal and upgrade, many ship enterprises with years’ fishing vessel experience further consolidated their brand advantages.

The implementation of the “Belt and Road” initiative enables fishing vessels to usher in more opportunity to go out. Four fishing vessels of totaling RMB28 million were exported from Zhejiang to Guinea-Bissau, Africa, two tuna angling vessels built by a Fujian ship enterprise were delivered to Sri Lanka, showing the ship enterprises’determination to open global vision and cultivating open development capability. As long as industry policies and requirements are met, foreign export equipment, technology and standard will become an important content of international fishery cooperation.

In addition to steel fishing vessel,GFR fishing vessels entered a new era for rapid development. In September 2017, 39m GFR oceanic ultralow tuna longline fishing vessel “Long Xing 801” was launched in Dalian. In fact,small and medium-sized GFR fishing vessel construction has been started in many coastal areas, GRF fishing vessel industrialization has obtained better development conditions either in management or technology.

What is particularly gratifying is equipment in new business format and new model of fishery has started application. For one year, China’s first cultivation ship “Lulan Fishing and Raising 61699” set sail at Rizhao port and started Yellow Sea cold water mass green cultivation; CIMC Raffles Offshore Engineering Co Ltd ocean range platform orders kept coming in, and several ocean range platforms have been put into use in Shandong Province; high, medium and low-grade leisure fishing vessels increased at the 10th China (Xiamen)International Leisure Fisheries Expo than previous events. Ship enterprises will possess broader arena in boosting modern fishery construction.★