Beihai City of south China's coastal region of Guangxi has seen a surge in seafood trade since the annual South China Sea fishing moratorium was lifted on August 16.
Even before dawn, fishing boats started to dock along the shore, bringing back a rich variety of seafood, attracting wholesalers and local residents eager to purchase the fresh catch.
At a port in Qiaogang Township, peak hours of seafood trade fall between 3:00 and 5:00.
On the early morning of Saturday, workers carried basket after basket of seafood from the boats to the fish market, which was already filled with vendors examining the goods and inquiring about prices.
A continuous flow of trucks also arrived to transport fresh catch. Workers were busy counting, sorting, weighing, and packaging the seafood, preparing it for distribution to markets across China.
Beihai has registered 4,751 fishing boats so far this year. Since the start of the new fishing season, these boats have been setting out to sea in succession. Their catches include a variety of seafood such as groupers, mantis shrimp, crabs, lobsters and squids.
E-commerce vendors in this township received about 5,200 orders on Saturday alone, generating online sales of around 1.6 million yuan (more than 223,000 U.S. dollars), according to data provided by a seafood e-commerce association in Qiaogang.
About 60 percent of these orders came from south Guangxi and neighboring Guangdong Province, with the farthest orders arriving from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region about 4,000 kilometers away.
Seafood trade surges in south China's Guangxi after fishing moratorium
