Construction of China's largest intelligent deep-sea fishery has started in Qingdao, local authorities said Thursday.
The project, built by Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group CO., LTD, a subsidiary of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, consists of three fish farm platforms and a support platform.
Each fish farm platform is a huge hexagonal steel net-cage, measuring 110 meters by 75 meters. It can accommodate 250,000 cubic meters of water to farm 10 million pompano.
The output of each net-cage is expected to reach 6,000 tonnes.
The fishery is built for Hainan Province, said Chen Qing, an official of the shipbuilding firm, adding it can resist powerful typhoons when submerged in water.
The intelligent fishery only requires nine workers for the support platform, where they can feed, fish, collect dead fish, and clean the cage using a remote control.
"It will be a demonstrative project of marine aquaculture. This environmentally friendly project can be promoted to upgrade our marine fisheries and improve the industrial quality," said Wang Lisheng from Hainan's ocean and fisheries department.
The shipbuilding firm delivered a large deep-sea semi-submersible fish farm to Norwegian fish farming company SalMar ASA in June 2017.