Blood clams recently hit the market in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province, according to local media reports.

Blood clams, also known as blood cockles, are called as such because of the red hemoglobin liquid inside their soft tissues.

Blood calms produced in Taizhou's Samen county are nationally renowned and a national agricultural GI product.

Sanmen has a long history of breeding blood clams. The clams produced in the county are tender, fatty and slightly salty as the location where they are harvested is where salt and fresh waters meet.

Official statistics show that Sanmen, which has blood clam breeding ponds spanning over 900,000 mu (60,000 hectares), is expected to produce more than 67,300 metric tons of blood clams worth over one billion yuan ($153.84 million) this year.

Despite the surge in output volume, the seafood is expected to be priced at over 36 yuan per kilogram this year, 10 yuan higher than the previous year, according to Lin Houyi, Part chief of Taotou village in Sanmen.

The 300-plus farmers in the village earn about 70 percent of their income from the breeding of blood clams, which are mainly sold to cities including Wenzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian and even abroad.

Local farmer Wang Ruikuai said that he has leased 50-mu of ponds to farm blood clams, which is expected to generate about 800,000 yuan in income for him this year.