Two super vessels designed for fishing saury set out on their maiden voyages on Oct 22 to fishery grounds in the North Pacific, Qingdao Morning News reported.

The two costly vessels were equipped with 108 lamps on both sides of the ships in order to catch sauries and squid. They were also equipped with high-end devices such as sonar fish finders and fish and bird detecting radar. The ships can survive a magnitude 10 typhoon.

Each voyage running as far as the Bering Straits Bridge costs around 7 million yuan ($1.1 million) and can yield up to 20 million yuan in output.

Recent years have witnessed huge declines in both the variety and size of fish due to loss of fishery resources. The Qingdao municipal government issued the Comments on Speeding up Deep-Sea Fishery Development to support manufacturing steel fishing vessels boasting a large amount of output and capacity to attract more investments.

Currently, there are 18 registered fishery companies with 29 vessels at sea. Nineteen vessels are under construction and 35 more are scheduled for construction.

"The two vessels are mainly for fishing saury for export. We have already received orders from companies in South Korea and Japan, and the vessels haven't even reached the fishery grounds," said an official from the Qingdao municipal bureau of ocean and fisheries. "We have maintained a long-standing cooperative relationship with these two countries for many years."