Pollution, overfishing threaten East China Sea fishing grounds

Overfishing and increasing pollution are destroying one of the world’s great fishing grounds in the East China Sea, Chinese state media said Wednesday. Eighty-one percent of the sea has been rated in the second-worst of five pollution grades, up from just 53 percent in 2000, the Xinhua news agency reported. Known in China as the Zhoushan Fishery, the East China Sea was previously listed among the world’s largest fisheries with 20,800 square kilometers (8,300 square miles) providing a tenth of China’s total catch in 2002. The Zhoushan Fishery Bureau said on Tuesday that the annual catch dropped from over 1.3 million tons in 2001 to 980,000 tons last year, Xinhua said.