Marine ranch of Dongyu Seafood Co in Muping district of Yantai [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Yantai, a coastal city in East China's Shandong province, saw a dramatic increase in marine ranching development which facilitates the city's recreational fishing industry, local media reported.

A marine ranch is a sea area in which fishermen adopt large-scale fishery facilities and systematic management systems to raise marine resources such as fish, shrimp, shellfish and algae in the natural marine environment.

Dongyu marine ranch in Yantai's Muping district helps local fishers protect and boost fishery resources, increase fishery production, and further improve the fishery industry.

Yantai-based Dongyu Seafood is engaged in mariculture, processing, and marketing. It enjoys a high-quality sea area of more than 6666.6 hectare and breeds wild sea cucumbers.

According to Li Xiaoping, chairman of Dongyu, the company has built two multi-functional offshore platforms with an investment of over 20 million yuan ($2.89 million).

The projects are expected to drive the development of local recreational fishing such as sea fishing, breeding, processing and catering.

Its annual sea cucumber output reached more than 200,000 kilograms and its annual shellfish output amounted to more than one million kilograms, and that number is increasing every year. Li said that Dongyu also plans to explore the fields of fine and deep processing of seafood and develop organic sea cucumber peptide cosmetics and ready-to-eat canned shellfish.

In recent years, Yantai has adopted strategies to develop offshore marine ranch equipment including multi-functional ocean ranch platforms and build an intelligent, informative and diversified management system.

The city is also planning to build four marine ranching belts in the city's western, northern, eastern and southern offshore sea areas – as it strives to become a world-class marine ranching demonstration city.