The impact of the COVID-19 on China's fisheries sector and its countermeasures

Validation of the Chinese version of the COVID-19 Phobia Scale among Chinese college students

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Different languages and versions of the COVID-19 Phobia Scale (C19P-S) have been developed and tested in several countries. Chinese college students are a large vulnerable group and are susceptible to psychological problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, no studies had yet examined the reliability and validity of the C19P-S in China among college students group. This study aims to evaluate the COVID-19-related phobia of Chinese college students and examine the reliability and validity of this scale.

METHODS

A total of 1689 Chinese college students participated in this study from April 27 to May 7, 2022. They finished the online questionnaire including demographic information and C19P-S. Cronbach's alpha and split-half reliability were used to examine the internal consistency of the scale. Confirmatory factor analysis was further used to examine the scale's construct validity. Convergence validity was also confirmed.

RESULTS

This scale in Chinese had high reliability and validity. The Cronbach's alpha and split-half reliability of the total scale were 0.960 and 0.935, respectively. The construct validity-related indicators of the total scale met the standards (RMSEA = 0.064, IFI = 0.907, TLI = 0.906, and CFI = 0.907). Regarding the subscales, the composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) also met the cutoff values (CR > 0.7 and AVE >0.5). Comparison between gender groups showed that total and subscale scores between male and female students differed significantly.

CONCLUSION

The Chinese version of the C19P-S was appropriate for evaluating phobic symptoms among Chinese college students. Therefore, this tool could be used to evaluate the mental health of college students in the future.

Current status of industrialized aquaculture in China: a review

Industrialized aquaculture is an essential trend for aquaculture development in China, owing to its considerable advantages in lower water consumption, higher productivity, and sustainability. However, information on its current status has been scarce up to now. This paper reviewed the current status and has identified existing problems as well as proposing possible solutions for the development of industrialized aquaculture in China. This field is still at an early stage of development and is mainly distributed in coastal regions. Major constraints on industrialized aquaculture include high capital and operational costs, the uncompetitive market price of aquatic products, uneven distribution of production and farming areas, a lack of suitably experienced managers and operators for recirculating aquaculture systems, and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Possible solutions to these problems include technological innovations in systems optimization, the use of renewable energy sources and biofloc technology, the pollution-free certification of industrial aquaculture products, increased numbers of professionals in water quality control and waste management, and the financial assistance to companies and farmers along the aquaculture industrial chain.

Initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Australian fisheries production, research organisations and assessment: shocks, responses and implications for decision support and resilience

Australia's fisheries have experience in responding individually to specific shocks to stock levels (for example, marine heatwaves, floods) and markets (for example, global financial crisis, food safety access barriers). The COVID-19 pandemic was, however, novel in triggering a series of systemic shocks and disruptions to the activities and operating conditions for all Australia's commercial fisheries sectors including those of the research agencies that provide the information needed for their sustainable management. While these disruptions have a single root cause-the public health impacts and containment responses to the COVID-19 pandemic-their transmission and effects have been varied. We examine both the impacts on Australian fisheries triggered by measures introduced by governments both internationally and domestically in response to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, and the countermeasures introduced to support continuity in fisheries and aquaculture production and supply chains. Impacts on fisheries production are identified by comparing annual and monthly catch data for Australia's commercial fisheries in 2020 with averages for the last 4-5 years. We combine this with a survey of the short-term disruption to and impacts on research organisations engaged in fisheries monitoring and assessment and the adaptive measures they deployed. The dominant impact identified was triggered by containment measures both within Australia and in export receiving countries which led to loss of export markets and domestic dine-in markets for live or fresh seafood. The most heavily impact fisheries included lobster and abalone (exported live) and specific finfishes (exported fresh or sold live domestically), which experienced short-term reductions in both production and price. At the same time, improved prices and demand for seafood sold into domestic retail channels were observed. The impacts observed were both a function of the disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the countermeasures and support programs introduced by various national and state-level governments across Australia to at least partly mitigate negative impacts on harvesting activities and supply chains. These included protecting fisheries activities from specific restrictive COVID-19 containment measures, pro-actively re-establishing freight links, supporting quota roll-overs, and introducing wage and businesses support packages. Fisheries research organisations were impacted to various degrees, largely determined by the extent to which their field monitoring activities were protected from specific restrictive COVID-19 containment measures by their state-level governments. Responses of these organisations included reducing fisheries dependent and independent data collection as required while developing strategies to continue to provide assessment services, including opportunistic innovations to harvest data from new data sources. Observed short run impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has emphasised both the vulnerability of fisheries dependent on export markets, live or fresh markets, and long supply chains and the resilience of fisheries research programs. We suggest that further and more comprehensive analysis over a longer time period of the long-run impacts of subsequent waves of variants, extended pandemic containment measures, autonomous and planned adaptive responses would be beneficial for the development of more effective counter measures for when the next major external shock affects Australian fisheries.

International crew changes amid global pandemic outbreaks: Key issues and system innovations

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic all over the world has seriously affected seafarers' work and life. In this paper, we focus on the countermeasures of major countries and organizations on the seafarer shift matter during the pandemic period. And the target of this paper is to become useful in promoting the shift change of seafarers more smoothly. Policies are identified on the basis of a systematic review of importance in combination with a detailed analysis of the primary global and national policy initiatives. Findings suggest that the root cause of the international crew change crisis lies in the issues and deficiencies in the crew change system, economic security, seafarers' welfare, and seafarers' social security among other aspects. On this basis, this paper gives feasible suggestions in the respects of system innovation, economic security and welfare, social security system innovation and technical innovation.