Chow and Lin

We examined the impact of farm fishing through the large yellow croaker which is China’s most popular fish.

Working with scientists, fish experts and local government officials, we traversed 4 towns in Fujian China to build a tessellated mosaic of fish portraits to see how much wild small fish is needed to sustain fish farming.

The answer is 7.15kg, 39 species, more than 4000 wild small fish to raise a single kilogram of large yellow croaker

They are the 3 singular fish at the centre of the picture.

The large yellow croaker is one of the most popular fish in China, and the fish used to be caught in the wild for generations. Overfishing coupled with a sharp rise in consumption in China has led to near extinction of the large yellow croaker species in the wild.

Today, virtually every large yellow croaker is farmed, and they are fed with wild small fish caught in the nearby China seas. Many of these fish are caught premature, and these species are threatened due to overfishing and lack of regulation.

Each year, 400,000 tonnes of wild small fish are caught, ground and fed as large yellow croaker feed, and over 7.17 million tonnes of wild small fish in total, which is more than the amount of annual catch of Indonesia are consumed for aquaculture.

Commissioned by Greenpeace

Equivalence — The Ecological Footprint of Fish ©️Chow and Lin
Chow and Lin

Installation View. “Equivalence — The Ecological Footprint of Fish”, Lianzhou Foto Festival, Lianzhou Museum of Photography, Lianzhou, China, 2017.