Large Yellow Croaker: From Wild Catch to Aquaculture, a Microcosm of China’s Seafood History
“When the yellow croaker arrives, ten thousand taels of gold follow.” Wild large yellow croakers are traditional banquet staples and auspicious dishes in Zhejiang and Shanghai. Along the Chinese coastline, perhaps no fish has experienced a more turbulent fate than the large yellow croaker.
In October this year, I witnessed a night harvest of large yellow croakers in Ningde, Fujian.
Night harvesting is designed to cater to the market’s preference for a deep, golden-hued fish. While the large yellow croaker’s skin glands give it a golden colour, these are easily broken down and faded by ultraviolet light. Consequently, a fish caught at night and one caught during the day command entirely different prices.
Between seven and eight o’clock, as darkness falls, the skilled sorting workers hired by the farmers take their positions. Supervisors from various sales channels also board the boats to assess the condition of the large yellow croakers in their respective offshore fish cages.
As the fishermen haul the nets from the water, the golden brilliance of the large yellow croakers is revealed, accompanied by a chorus of croaking sounds. Large ice-water tanks stand ready by the cages; once scooped up, the fish must be plunged immediately into the ice water and covered with a red light-blocking cloth.
By maintaining their golden colour and remaining in a semi-dormant state for about ten minutes in the ice water, the fish are ready for sorting and boxing. This is followed by a seamless operation of weighing, sorting, icing, and packing that lasts until midnight. These fish are then distributed through various sales channels, and within a few days, they will grace the tables of major city restaurants.
In recent years, wild large yellow croakers have entered the public eye as “sky-price fish”, often fetching thousands of yuan per jin—a stark contrast to the “cai gua” and “ban gua”.
Why is there such a vast difference in price for the same species of fish? The story begins over fifty years ago.
I.“Destructive Fishing”: From Dirt Cheap to Sky-High Prices
This era of rock-bottom prices was made possible by the widespread adoption of a specialised harvesting technique known as “qiao gu”.
Qiao gu, which can be literally translated as “knocking the bamboo”, dates back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The method involves two mother ships and dozens of smaller boats forming a circle. The crew continuously strike bamboo planks lashed to the boats, gradually tightening the circle. Once they reach a certain proximity, the intensity of the knocking increases, stunning the yellow croakers, which are then scooped up in one go.
Once the people of Zhejiang mastered this low-cost, high-efficiency method, local production soared. The peak occurred in 1974, when Zhejiang organised several large-scale expeditions to the deep-sea wintering grounds of the large yellow croaker; production in the East China Sea alone reached 190,000 tonnes.
While qiao gu guaranteed a cheap and abundant supply, it came at the devastating cost of “destructive fishing”. In the areas where this method was used, every fish—regardless of size—was stunned. The wild population began to suffer a precipitous decline. Under such intense fishing pressure, national production fell to less than 20,000 tonnes by 1988, and since 1990, it has been nearly impossible to identify a consistent seasonal fishing peak.
In the memories of older Shanghainese, the large yellow croaker was not only a dish for good luck but an essential part of any banquet. For a yellow croaker to be prized, it had to be large; during the years of abundance, fish weighing three to five jin were common. However, entering the 1990s, wild large yellow croakers vanished from the tables of Shanghai for many years.
Scarcity drives value. Wild large yellow croakers, once as cheap as cabbage, have in recent years frequently sold for thousands of yuan per jin.
In January 2022, a fishing boat in Xiangshan, Zhejiang, caught nearly 4,000 jin of wild large yellow croakers in a single net, selling for a total of 9.57 million yuan—over 2,000 yuan per jin. Similarly, in the winter of 2023, a fisherman from a mountain village in Ningbo, Zhejiang, caught a wild large yellow croaker measuring 67 cm and weighing 4.8 jin near the Central Mountain Island of Ninghai Bay in Xiangshan Port; it sold for 26,600 yuan.
II. From “Toiling at Sea” to Aquaculture
Today, the large yellow croaker is China’s largest farmed sea fish species. According to 2022 data, Ningde accounts for 96% of China’s total large yellow croaker production, with output having tripled over the last decade.
Traditional “cage culture” is the most prevalent farming method.
Initially, most farmers used small floating cages, which were simple in structure, low-cost, and easy to set up. However, this equipment was outdated and lacked resilience against wind and waves, limiting production to shallow coastal bays. Overcrowded, high-density cage layouts led to a series of environmental issues: poor water circulation, feed settling on the seabed and polluting the water, and a load that far exceeded the ecological carrying capacity of the area. This increased the risk of red tides and seriously disrupted the ecological balance of the sea.
Following the implementation of farming bans in certain coastal areas, the area used for ordinary cage culture has gradually shrunk. Today, through-frame cage culture has become the mainstream approach.
Through-frame cages offer better resistance to wind and waves, allowing them to be placed in shallower sea areas further from the shore than floating cages.
When connected, these through-frame cages form fishing rafts that are stable enough to be lived on; for many fishermen, their daily work and life take place right here. Since Ningde fishermen usually have homes on shore, they colourfully refer to going out to the rafts as “going downstairs”.
Anyone who has tasted wild Large Yellow Croaker can usually tell the difference: the wild variety is delicate, with a fresh, clean aroma and no off-flavours, low fat content, and flesh that forms natural, clove-like flakes. Farmed croakers, by contrast, often emit an earthy, muddy scent or off-flavours; they are rounder and greasier, with loose flesh and a distinct sense of being ‘artificial’.
Correspondingly, these differences in taste are reflected in the price. Traditional connoisseurs of the Large Yellow Croaker often express dissatisfaction with farmed versions, instead clinging to the legend of the wild fish, which has further solidified the high price of wild croakers. In Ningde, a major hub for croaker farming, the price difference between a 500g wild fish and a farmed one can be more than twenty-fold.
Within this enormous price gap, the “semi-wild Large Yellow Croaker” was born.
III. From Farming to “Semi-Wild”
Today, the new challenge for croaker farmers is how to raise them *well*—increasing added value, preventing price crashes, and making farmed fish as close to wild as possible.
To produce fish with better taste and higher value, the croakers need to “eat less and move more” in a water environment that closely mimics the wild.
The manager of the “rewilding” base in Ningde told me that to preserve the taste, they attempt to simulate the growth conditions of wild fish: low density, limited feeding, high activity, large water volumes, and strong currents. This requires far more meticulous management; to align with the fish’s natural biological rhythms, they stop feeding when temperatures drop, and only supplement feed during spring tides when the current accelerates and the fish become more active.
Consequently, unlike those from industrial farming, these semi-wild croakers grow more slowly. A semi-wild fish weighing 750g requires four years of cultivation.
While semi-wild croakers raised in enclosures and deep-sea cages are indeed of superior quality and offer richer returns, they carry higher risks and production costs. Furthermore, as “semi-wild croaker” is a relatively new concept, farmers must simultaneously tackle the challenge of market promotion—a very long and complex chain. Small-scale producers generally lack the capacity to enter this market and can only participate by joining the production lines of large conglomerates.
If a single *mu* of land allows for intensive cultivation on shore, ocean farming is an entirely different beast—a high-stakes game of strength and resources. Resources are more concentrated, the “head effect” is pronounced, and small producers find it difficult to get a piece of the pie.
“Semi-wild” is essentially a marketing term used to describe fish that fall between purely farmed and purely wild. There is no official production standard; some may come from optimised traditional cages, while others result from high-cost, precision farming in enclosures or deep-sea cages. Currently, the market still lacks a more granular grading and traceability system for farmed Large Yellow Croaker.
IV. Draining the Pond to Catch the Fish
After coming full circle, the anchor of the Large Yellow Croaker’s value seems never to have changed: it is all about the “wild”.
I have eaten wild Large Yellow Croaker, and that delicate, pure taste is, in a sense, the “flavour of nature”. I often complain about the fishiness and poor taste of farmed fish. Having understood the source of these off-flavours and investigated various farming methods, I cherish the wild fish and seafood that are still available today even more.
It is poignant to realise that after an era of crude resource extraction, modern humans must now invest increasingly higher costs and effort just to approach the “flavour of nature”.
Had we known then what we know now, would we have acted so?
[1] “Large Yellow Croaker Farming”, Fujian Provincial Department of Science and Technology, 2004, Beijing
[2] “Quality Evaluation and Grading of Large Yellow Croaker under Different Farming Modes and Distribution Methods”, 2022, Shi Yuzhuo
[3] “Preliminary Study on the Relationship between Nutrition and the Quality of Farmed Large Yellow Croaker”, Ma Rui, 2014
[4] “Nearly 1.6 Billion Large Yellow Croaker Fry Released into the Sea in 8 Days! Over 140 Hatcheries Spontaneously Sign Release Agreement—Can This Reverse the Market Crash?”, Great Nation Fisheries, 2019
Images provided by the author and the web
Editor: Ze En