The brown croaker fish [Photo/zhoushan.cn]

The large-scale artificial reproduction of brown croaker fish project has proven a success in Zhoushan, East China's Zhejiang province, with 150,000 captive bred brown croaker fish kept at an aquafarm in the city's Dinghai district.

Now three to four centimeters long, they survived out of 1 million such fish that were bred by artificial means from the brown croaker fish captured last August, according to Zhou Gaomin, head of the aquafarm. 

This is the first time that a large-scale artificial reproduction of the brown croaker fish has succeeded in the city, despite some attempts made by local residents several years ago. 

"The survival rate of the fish is very low, so we have to change the water and adjust the water temperature every day," said Zhou.

The brown croaker is one of the commercial fishes in Zhoushan, which are considered to be very nutritious. However, the fish species has been drastically declining in number in recent years due to overfishing and environmental pollution.

The local fishery department has been strengthening research on fish breeding to diversify the farmed species and protect fish resources.