Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, the country's largest freshwater lake, is a major fishing area after a 15-year moratorium.

The spring harvest this year was very successful, with few signs of adverse effects from the lowest water-level in 50 years, as happened last year, Xinhua news agency reported. Fishermen are convinced the government's annual moratorium has worked.

The 286,000-hectare lake was known as a natural fishing farm, with the highest fishing output recorded in 1954, exceeding 34,200 tons.

However, excessive fishing, a shrinking water area for farmland and increasing water pollution endangered the lake's supply of fish. The annual output dropped to 12,700 tons at the lowest, and the fish were smaller and of poor quality.

Under the call for sustainable fishing, the country's Law of Fishing was imposed in 1986. In the same year, the provincial government of Jiangxi formally introduced a three-month annual moratorium on 8,000 hectares of fish-spawning areas on the lake, and a six-month embargo on 1,333 hectares of the lake area every winter.

Meanwhile, strict rules concerning license management, a limited catch and the use of fishing outfits has been imposed on the fishing industry.

(Eastday.com.cn 06/05/2001)