A salmon breeding base in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, thousands of miles inland from the nearest ocean, has been ramping up production with the arrival of spring.
As the temperature rises, breeders at the base in Nilka County have been separating juvenile fish. Newly hatched fish weighing over 10 grams after an incubation period of five months are carefully sorted according to size, placed in different cages, and fed exclusively nutritious meals, allocated according to the growth stage. This process is now fully automated.
The breeding base plans to release about 9.1 million juvenile fish this year into a mountainside lake in the county. These young salmon will grow into catchable adult fish in two and a half to three years.
On the water surface, several members of a fishing team work together to pull in huge fishing nets on a daily basis. Salmon that meet standards are pulled into pipes from the breeding cages by a fish suction pump, and then sent directly to the processing and packaging workshop with the flow of water.
From there, they are bound for the domestic and international market alike.
"Recently, we have received a lot of orders, about 7,000 to 8,000 fish per day," said a fishing team member of Xinjiang Tianyun Organic Farming Company.
Xinjiang has more than about 3 million hectares of water bodies suitable for aquaculture, with good-quality cold water resources formed by melting snow and ice in the mountains rich in dissolved oxygen, providing a congenial environment for the growth and reproduction of salmon.
Inland salmon breeding base nets success in Xinjiang
Inland salmon breeding base nets success in Xinjiang
