Shenzhen-listed Zhangzidao Group Co, an aquatic products company, may have made fraudulent disclosures, Beijing-based news portal watching.cn reported on Monday.

More than 2,000 residents of Zhangzidao in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, stated under their real names that the company had misled investors in its claim that a cold water current wiped out its ocean-based scallop stocks in 2014, the portal said.

The company reported a loss of 860.8 million yuan ($131.92 million) in the third quarter of 2014, a huge contrast to its net profit of 47.96 million yuan in the first half of 2014.

A rare natural phenomenon - a cold water current - was the major reason for the loss in 2014, the company said in a filing with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in November of that year. The current swept into the northern Yellow Sea from June to August 2014, which wiped out all the company's scallop stocks, it claimed.

Scallops are one of the company's major products.

The losses were actually caused by premature harvesting and "fraudulent seeding," noted the watching.cn report.

The Global Times was unable to contact the company as of press time on Monday.

"Climate change has indeed had a great impact on fisheries and marine farming, but the loss claimed by Zhangzidao in 2014 was very unusual," Ma Wenfeng, a senior analyst at Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultant, told the Global Times on Monday.

It's difficult to evaluate the process of seeding and harvesting at marine farms, so it's possible that such companies' disclosures may be fraudulent, Ma said.

Further, "there are irregularities in the Chinese stock market such as insider trading and accounting fraud," Li Bo, an analyst at GF Securities, told the Global Times on Monday.

"If Zhangzidao made fraudulent disclosures, it will face penalties from the regulators" after an investigation.

Regulators need to step up scrutiny of listed companies and impose heavy fines or have companies delisted if false disclosures are found, Li said, noting that the penalties must be severe enough to "shock" market participants.

On August 6, 2015, Zhangzidao announced its marine farms in Changhai county in Liaoning had been hit by strong winds. The company didn't disclose the scale of the losses, but it said it had filed an insurance claim.