Song Zhou signaled for him to continue with his eyes, so Lu Ao had no choice but to go on. "Didn't we mention wanting to build a Marine Ranch before? We've been looking into it, but we still haven't decided when to start. When I brought it up yesterday, they all started giving me ideas and recommending suitable waters. We got a little carried away talking, and I drank too much."
Song Zhou asked, "So what did you discuss yesterday?"
"We didn't get into anything very specific. We mostly talked about the current situation and prospects for Marine Ranches."
Marine Ranches were a new concept proposed in the last century.
They generally referred to using large-scale fishing facilities and systematic management within a designated sea area, making use of the natural marine ecosystem to gather economically valuable marine life released by humans, then raising fish, shrimp, shellfish, algae, and other marine resources offshore in a planned and purposeful manner, much like herding cattle and sheep on land.[1]
Most people were unfamiliar with this area, and many still confused Marine Ranches with traditional marine aquaculture.
Lu Ao said, "There are programs here that support Marine Ranches too. Xiang Xingchang and the others told me to remember to apply for the relevant policy support in time."
"Is it still in time this year?"
"No." Lu Ao sounded dejected after saying that. "We talked it over and realized that building a Marine Ranch is pretty difficult. Some people used to take advantage of the policy benefits for Marine Ranch development by lumping ordinary nearshore cage farming, offshore deep-water cage farming, and aquaculture vessels together as Marine Ranches. Haven't they been cracking down on corruption these past two years? Those practices have been banned, and even normal applications and approvals have become stricter."
"It