Sinchang Workers’ District is up from Hamhung, an industrial city in South Hamgyong Province, along the east coast of Korea.

Here is the Sinchang fishery cooperative in Pukchong County, which is noted for its healthy business in the east coastal area and the Ministry of Fisheries as well.

It has a kelp farm in over 20 hectares, a seafood breeding ground covering over 30 hectares, dozens of motorboats and boats for aquiculture, a processing plant, cold storage and others.

“Twenty years ago, our cooperative had only a small wharf in which only a boat could be tied up and the last vestiges of a breeding ground,” said Kim Sung Yol, chairman of the cooperative management board.

He found the key to revitalizing the cooperative and enhancing its self-supporting capacity in boosting aquiculture.

Unlike vegetable farming and animal husbandry, aquiculture needs no arable land and less feed.

The sea off Sinchang is favourable to kelp culture in many ways.

The sea currents bring in a large quantity of nutritive salts needed for growing kelp and the clear water promotes photosynthesis of the seaweed without being stained with mud or fur.

The cooperative refloated a stranded 30hp motorboat in the sea before anything else. They cut the used tyres to make rubber ropes for planting kelp seeds. As a result, a kelp cultivation ground was built in a half-hectare area.

It was small, but it was doubled and redoubled and finally increased to more than 20 hectares in over a dozen years.

“I think we reaped one ton of kelp per rope. We harvested dozens of tons more kelp per hectare this year than three years ago to break the peak production level,” said Merited Fisherman Maeng Son Gyong cheerfully.

The cooperative pays close attention to constantly employing advanced cultivating methods to suit the specific condition of the waters.

“We’ve switched from the old and established suspension cultivation method to the horizontal one to increase kelp production and succeeded in the floor-based sea culture which was considered to be difficult to apply in the east coastal areas with strong sea current and high waves. And all the facilities we use for aquiculture are homemade,” said senior engineer Pak Chang Hyok.

According to Pak, the two-layer kelp culture, on rafts and on the floor, saves much labour and materials, increases the crop yield and provides a feeding ground for such sea-floor animals as sea urchin and trepang. “It is just like catching two pigeons with one bean,” he said.

Last year the cooperative started a mixed culture of kelp, mussel and Undaria pinnatifida.

“In general, kelp absorbs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen during photosynthesis, whereas mussel takes in oxygen and releases carbon dioxide. These characters not only create favourable conditions for seaweeds and shellfish to grow together, but also improves sea environment,” said the chairman of the cooperative management board.

The cooperative also built an indoor sea water fish farm and culture ground.