Revealing the Current Situation and Strategies of Marine Ranching Development in China Based on Knowledge Graphs

In recent years, marine ranching, as an emerging model of marine industry development, has become a research hotspot in the marine industries of many countries. A marine ranching is an ecological aquaculture fishing ground formed within a specific sea area to increase and restore fishery resources, combined with artificial nurseries and the construction of fish reefs. As a major maritime country, China attaches great importance to the construction of marine ranching and supports them as an important means of conserving aquatic resources, providing fishermen with jobs, and building a marine ecological civilization. Bibliometric methods are considered to be useful tools that can provide a macroscopic overview of large amounts of academic literature, identify research priorities, and track the evolution of science and technology. In this paper, a comprehensive analysis was carried out using three methods: bibliometric analysis, visual analysis with CiteSpace software, and Excel pivoting, presented in the form of visual graphs and data charts. A total of 293 and 522 academic journal papers searched in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and the Web of Science (WoS) core databases were used, respectively, and to summarize the current status of construction of national marine ranching demonstration areas in China, this study also provides an overview of China’s policies on the development of marine ranching over the past two decades. It clarifies the current status, research hotspots and future directions of marine ranching research, and provides a reference for the evolution process and theoretical research of marine ranching in the future. At present, China is focusing on the development of modernized “all-area” marine ranching which is “ecological, precise, intelligent and integrated”. Obviously, it cannot be overemphasized that smart marine ranching will become a research hotspot in the future.