FISH BREEDING TECHNOLOGY

[Anchor Lead]

A Korean native catfish variety used to be quite common in Korea in the past, but nowadays its population has dwindled sharply. The good news is that a technology for mass-breeding the native catfish has been recently developed in Gangwon-do Province. Let's take a look

[Pkg]

"Miyugi" is a native Korean variety of freshwater fish. It looks like a smaller version of a regular catfish. In the past, this fish was easy to find in clean waters nationwide. But now it has become a rare species due to reckless fishing and environmental pollution.

[Soundbite] "Good luck, miyugi!"

Thirty thousand miyugi are released into the clean Dutayeon Valley. It has been 40 days since they hatched. The fish were incubated artificially by the Gangwon-do Water Resource Center. Until recently, the success rate of artificial incubation of the miyugi was less than 50 percent. Mass-breeding this fish was challenging as it requires the right conditions to grow. The Gangwon-do Water Resource Center became the first in Korea to artificially incubate 150,000 miyugi at once. This is the product of eight years of research.

[Soundbite] LEE BYUNG-RAE(GANGWON-DO WATER RESOURCE CENTER) : "We developed incubators specifically for this fish variety and raised the incubation rate to 80-90 percent. We have applied for a patent for this mass-breeding technology."

The Gangwon-do Water Resource Center plans to provide the new technology to private fish farms in order to mass-produce miyugi.

[Soundbite] BAE KI-MIN(GANGWON-DO WATER RESOURCE CENTER) : "If we continue research into this area, we will be able to develop this fish into a lucrative item in the next two or three years."

Now that mass-breeding this rare fish has become possible, various tourism and culinary items using miyugi will likely be developed.