Water quality fears will mean a price hike for famous hairy crabs

Authorities will cut the amount of space allocated to breeding the popular Yangcheng Lake hairy crab by 60 per cent this year, and probably down to zero by next year, in a bid to save the lake's water quality.

Hairy crab farms take up about 5,333 hectares of the lake in Jiangsu province, but that will be cut to 2,133 hectares by spring to save the deteriorating water quality, China News Service reported yesterday.

The decision came one month after a water crisis in Tai Lake caused by a blue-green algae outbreak, which forced millions of people in the neighbouring city of Wuxi to go without tap water for days. Yangcheng Lake, together with Tai Lake, is a major source of drinking water in Suzhou , but its quality has been deteriorating due to the crab farms.

At its peak in 2001, more than 80 per cent of the lake was occupied by crab farms, according to the report.

The report echoed an order by the State Environmental Protection Administration on tough measures that needed to be taken to improve water safety, including gradual elimination of fish farming and a total ban on farming and animal husbandry within a kilometre of the lakes' peak waterlines.

The report cited an unidentified fishery expert as saying farmers should catch juvenile crabs, near where the lake met the Yangtze River, and raise them in Yangcheng Lake.

Another report, by the Shanghai Youth Daily, said the Tai Lake Fishing Management Authority was considering following suit and cutting the area of crab farms to 3,000 hectares, possibly leading to a 60 per cent reduction in crab farm areas, this year, and eventually phasing them out altogether.