Artificial waterweed-like structures are being used in the waters of China's largest freshwater lake of Poyang to promote fish breeding.

It was the first time that such a promotion program has been used to help fish propagate in Poyang Lake.

The drought in recent years in the lake areas has had a remarkable impact on fish breeding as many floating grass clustersstood high above the water surface and can no longer serve as habitats for fish for laying eggs, which need to stay glued on grass leaves to mature.

Officials from the fishing authorities of the lake distributed Wednesday the last batch of structures, made of soft, slim fiber materials. They will form a 6,000-square-meter area underwater, according to Qian Xin'e, director of the Poyang Lake Management Bureau of Jiangxi Province.

The province has suffered heavy drought since July 2003 and low flows of the Yangtze River, leading to low water levels in the lake.

With the assistance of the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), the bureau launched the artificial structure project during the annual fishing ban in spring, the season for fish breeding. Now, breeding has been seen on the artificial structures, the officials said.

Poyang Lake, with rich fish resources, was the earliest waters in China to impose a fishing ban during the fishing breeding period. China experimented with spring fishing bans at the lake since 1987. The fishing ban, from March 20 to June 20, was extended to cover the whole lake in 2002 amid testing of the spring fishing ban in the entire Yangtze River Valleys.

(Xinhua News Agency April 9, 2004)