1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 156: The neighbor in the crab world (more!)

Liang Ziqiang had no idea where to find heavy-shelled crabs, but the first place he thought of was Fox Bay Island.

Huwan Island was visited once a long time ago with Lu Feng, Fang Fang and others, and he has never been there since then. But he has never forgotten that the most abundant thing on the island is red crab.

With so many red crabs, maybe we can find some better-quality heavy-shell crabs. Even if we can't find any, red crabs are valuable. If we collect a bunch and sell them, we can definitely earn more than going out to sea to catch them in this season.

On the day of going to Fox Bay Island, Liang Ziqiang drove a boat, and Lin Baixian simply took his boat to go together, and they agreed to take turns on their boats, and next time they went to Fox Bay Island, he would drive his boat.

Anyway, there was no need to cast a wide net, and Liang Zifeng didn't have to participate. He had some free time, so he found a place to hide away and read a book.

Liang Ziqiang and Lin Baixian were on the boat this time. They didn't see any big fish popping up on the sea, so they didn't waste time fishing and drove all the way to Fox Bay Island.

The last time I came here it was a hot summer, but now it is late autumn with some cool breezes. There are no obvious changes on the island, except for some more yellow leaves on the beach.

After parking the boat, the two walked along the reef and looked around. In addition to red crabs, there were also some chicken claw snails on this island. Although the chicken claw snails here were far less fat than those on the nameless island and there were fewer of them, they still attracted them at the beginning.

Looking carefully at the cracks in some reefs, I found that those small chicken claw snails were still scattered. Compared with Guanqi Island, Huwan Island is also remote. It seems that no one has come here on purpose during this period.

They did not plan to pick chicken claw snails this time, because they had just supplied a batch of chicken claw snails to Yuehai Restaurant not long ago, and the quality of these snails was much better than this one. Du Ziteng did not need to import chicken claw snails again in the short term.

As the tide receded, octopuses, shrimps, and crabs all came out and moved around in shallow water or potholes.

The most abundant are crabs. Some fish and shrimps are sensitive to temperature and have begun to burrow into the mud, but crabs can still hold out for a while. Crabs in late autumn are actually at their plumpest.

"There's a large nest of stone crabs. Do you want it or not?" Lin Baixian saw the largest nest in the puddle, probably with more than twenty crabs. Unfortunately, they were all cheaper stone crabs.

"Take it! It's cheap here, and it's pretty good on the shore. At least you can get 40 cents!"

Liang Ziqiang replied that he had already started. With such a large nest, he didn't even plan to use elbow pliers to pick them up one by one, which would waste time.

Just use a hand scoop net and scoop up as much as you can.

Lin Baixian also brought a hand-held net. The two of them took turns to fish, and after two hauls they caught almost all the fish.

Liang Ziqiang caught five or six in his first net, and four or five in his second, so in total there must have been more than ten. Lin Baixian should have caught about the same number.

The third net was basically hopeless, as the crabs were trying to escape in the water at a fairly fast speed.

The two continued to search forward.

"This red crab is so fat!"

Many red crabs were scattered around the rocks. Although they were not as clustered as the stone crabs in front, they looked much fatter than the stone crabs at first glance.

It was time for the two to compete in hand speed. They reached into the water with the bent iron tongs, picked up the red crab steadily before it could react, and then threw it into the bucket.

After walking for a while, the two stopped. In the shallow water, there was another group of crabs scattered around, no less than the stone crabs in front. But judging by their shapes, they were obviously not stone crabs.

"Is this, a king crab?" Lin Baixian suddenly became interested.

Although the king crab is not as expensive as the red crab, it is more expensive than the stone crab.

Liang Ziqiang was also very excited and planned to use the hand net to fish again. However, after taking a second look, he immediately lost interest:
"This is not a king crab, it's a steamed bun crab!"

Steamed bun crab and brown crab do look similar from a distance. Some vendors even use steamed bun crab to impersonate brown crab, but when you really eat them, the two are actually very different. These crabs in front of you look strange and even cute.

The entire shell is plump and round, like a balloon that is about to burst. Its extremely plump appearance really looks like a steamed bun or bread.

The first impression is that the crab meat is definitely plump, but this is purely deceiving in appearance.

In fact, their shells are almost empty, with little meat inside. The only edible part is the two claws. One way to eat it is to break off the thick claws, steam them, and then smash them with a kitchen knife or a small hammer. The crab meat inside is still quite firm.

For the sake of their crab claws, Liang Ziqiang decided to take a few.

The steamed bun crab is also known as the "silly roe deer" in the crab world. It is so cute and stupid, and they saw it the next second.

When they used the bent tongs to grab the crabs, the steamed crabs a little distance away just looked at them stupidly, as if they were watching a show.

It wasn't until the bent iron pincers started moving the crabs near them that they suddenly realized what was happening and hurriedly prepared to run away.

But they did not run away alone. Instead, they used their claws to pull a slightly smaller female crab next to them into their arms, hugged her tightly, and ran away with her in their arms.

The mantou crab is well-known in the animal world for loving his wife. Even when facing death, his first priority is to hug his wife. When he escapes to a safe place, he will let the female go, and quickly dig a hole, burying both of them in the sand on the seabed to hide.

But many people may not know that their eyesight is not very good. In many cases, they just hug someone else's wife in a panic and run away by mistake.

Therefore, they are also called the Wang next door in the animal world.

Of course, poor eyesight could just be an excuse, and it’s hard to say whether it was deliberate picking up the wrong child.

The two were not very enthusiastic about the steamed bun crabs, so they were too lazy to chase after those that ran away with their wives in their arms, and just let them go free.

Fortunately, after collecting some steamed crabs, we found a lot of plump red crabs after a while.

The two of them picked up things as they walked, and got a lot of valuable red crabs.

Unconsciously, the two had walked a long way around Fox Bay Island. At this time, under a large, oddly shaped reef with a sunken bottom, several bright figures immediately attracted their attention.

There were a dozen or so large crabs at the edge of the concave area at the bottom of the reef, which were very different from all the crabs seen before.

These crabs are brightly colored, and their shells are covered with deep red patterns.

"Red flower crab?!"

Everyone knows that orchid crab is one of the representative products of the South China Sea, but orchid crab can only be caught in deep sea.

The red flower crab and the orchid crab only differ by one letter, and are both species unique to the South China Sea.

The difference is that you don’t have to go to the deep sea to encounter red flower crabs, and the red flower crabs are more colorful in appearance. Because of their unique and beautiful patterns, they are called the "beauty of crabs."

Red flower crab, also known as rusty crab, has full meat, white texture, sweet and rich crab flavor, and granular roe with bright orange color. This crab not only tastes great, but is also rich in protein, phospholipids, vitamins and other nutrients.

Because of its superior meat quality and the fact that it is difficult to reproduce, this type of crab is even more expensive than the more expensive orchid crab!
I originally thought that on Fox Bay Island, the red crabs that cost one yuan and twenty cents per pound were considered the most noble crabs.

Unexpectedly, there were a bunch of red flower crabs hidden there, which were even more valuable than red roe crabs!
I proofread and improved another chapter at around 4 a.m. and added more chapters. Thank you for your rewards, monthly tickets, and recommendations during this period! Happy reading!

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(End of this chapter)