1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 330 Selling a Ton of Tiger Shark

All the living fish on the water surface have dispersed, leaving only the floating fish with their white bellies turned up.

It would be unjust if so many fish were left to rot on the surface of the water. Liang Ziqiang drove his big boat towards the floating fish, intending to use a trawl net to start a ready-made harvest.

The hole manta ray and the spotted manta ray, both of these stingrays are considered quite delicious and have floated a lot.

The largest one was the super-large electric ray. Although it led many electric rays to kill the tiger shark, the super-large electric ray itself also died heroically.

The meat of electric rays is not as good as that of spotted rays and scorpion rays, but it is also edible. We usually eat less of them, mainly because they are electric and fishermen rarely catch them.

The price is estimated to be much lower than that of the electric ray, but it can definitely be sold for money. Seeing that this electric ray is so large, it is naturally not worth wasting.

Of course, the real giant is the tiger shark. Sharks lack a normal urinary system, and the urea content in their meat is very high, which smells like urine and is simply inedible.

But this doesn’t mean that this tiger shark is not valuable!
Tiger shark skin is known as "shark skin" and is the best leather material;

The tiger shark has a large liver and has been used to make cod liver oil since this era;

Of course, the most rare and valuable items are the tiger shark's dorsal fin, pelvic fin and caudal fin, which are the legendary "shark fins".

Although controversy has gradually arisen in later generations, it is believed that the "shark fin" that Chinese people have been pursuing since ancient times does not actually contain any special nutritional ingredients and is not much better than pig skin...

But now is the era of shark fin. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a popular saying among the wealthy people in Hong Kong Island: "Have a bowl of shark fin to rinse your mouth."

"Shark fin with rice" was extremely popular in Hong Kong Island in the 1970s and 1980s, becoming a symbol of prosperity.

In order to catch this giant shark, Liang Ziqiang adjusted the course and circled back and forth in this sea several times before finally succeeding.

This time, there is no need to follow the three-hour operation rule. After almost all the floating fish have been caught, Liang Ziqiang asked Zhu Tianpeng and others to start operating the net.

This time, after the gantry hung the net bag shakily up, Liang Ziqiang was afraid that the iron hook would not be able to bear the weight and would fall from mid-air.

When dumping the catch, he saw a giant shark falling out of the fishing net, and his scalp tingled. He was a little worried that a big hole would be smashed into his deck...

Fortunately, the big steel ship was designed to catch tons of fish in the deep sea. Although the tiger shark landed on the deck and made a deafening noise, at least the deck was not broken.

Liang Ziqiang's boat was only 24 meters long. The shark took up 5 or 6 meters of it...

Even though it was a giant shark that had long since died, when one's eyes fell on the shark's scimitar-like dorsal fin and body with large stripes, one could still feel the sound of one's heart beating faster.

This deep-sea monster has no life, but its power is still there, making people feel afraid to look directly at it.

Now that the fish are on the boat, problems arise: how do we preserve such big fish?

It was definitely unrealistic to carry the whole fish into the cold storage. Not to mention whether they could get into the entrance, they couldn't lift a giant fish weighing more than a ton!
Unless you start cutting it on the deck, chopping it into pieces and carrying it into the cold storage hold.

But the workload is not small!

After much deliberation, Liang Ziqiang made a decision.

"No fishing today, let's go back early!"

The original plan was to cast one more net today, and around noon, end the four-day deep-sea trip and start the return voyage.

Although we haven't started today's normal trawling operations yet, we can still say that we have found a treasure and the harvest is nothing short of amazing.

It would be better to return early and place the sharks on the deck without refrigeration. As long as we drive fast and don't delay, we can sell the tiger sharks early and ensure their freshness.

When they suddenly heard the decision to return early, several crew members were quite happy.

The return trip was not idle either. Liang Ziqiang drove the boat, Zhu Tianpeng looked out, and Deng Zhaocai and Lu Song transferred all the inactivated electric rays, spotted rays, sea rays, shrimps and crabs, large and small, to the refrigerated compartment.

After the transfer, he found a knife and started cutting the shark fins according to Liang Ziqiang's instructions.

Liang Ziqiang had no intention of selling the entire shark to the county's fishing port purchasing station.

The fins were cut off first, so it would be more cost-effective to sell them separately to Yuehai Restaurant. It was no surprise that Du Ziteng would definitely buy shark fins, a typical high-end seafood product. The remaining fish body was sold to the purchasing station at the fishing port.

These days, even great white sharks and basking sharks have not yet been included in the protected list, let alone tiger sharks, and fishing for them is currently not prohibited.

Of course, even if there is no ban, local fishermen rarely go shark fishing, because they are all small wooden boats and cannot withstand the risk of being attacked by large sharks. If they occasionally see one, they can only take a detour.

In fact, even for a large ship like Liang Ziqiang, his first reaction was to stay away from it. If the tiger shark hadn't died, Liang Ziqiang wouldn't have touched it at all.

After returning to the coastal area, Liang Ziqiang headed straight towards the county fishing port.

Among the normal fish caught this time, the most amazing number was sardines. The net was full of sardines, more than double the usual trawl catch.

After weighing them, the amount of deep-sea sardines reached more than 2,600 kilograms, more than one ton.

It's a pity that sardines are cheap, so they normally score 9 points. The ones caught with trawl nets are of poor quality, but considering that the overall quality is not particularly bad, I gave them 8 points.

More than 2,600 kilograms, which is about 210 yuan.

Two valuable tunas, one albacore and one yellowfin tuna, together cost more than a hundred dollars.

The price of deep-sea orchid crabs is also very good, one dollar and twenty cents, plus fifty cents for swimming crabs, and the slightly cheaper stone crabs also sold for a lot of money.

Others include expensive and cheap ones, including the croaker, bluefin bream, giant mackerel, giant bomb fish, as well as electric rays, spotted rays, sea rays, shrimps and crabs that were electrocuted to death.

The last trip was two days in the deep sea, and the total fish catch was more than 4,000 kilograms; this trip was three and a half days, almost four days, and the total fish catch reached more than 7,000 kilograms.

Of course, tiger sharks are not included.

Tiger shark meat is the cheapest fish Liang Ziqiang has ever seen in recent years, only two cents per pound.

The purchasing station used a crane to lift the tiger shark off the boat for weighing.

A tiger shark weighing tons only costs forty dollars...

The shark skin and fish liver were quite valuable, worth about two hundred yuan, so the total amount I gave was two hundred and forty.

More than 7,000 kilograms of deep-sea fish and shrimp cost more than 1,900 yuan, plus the tiger shark cost 240 yuan, so I got 2,200 yuan at the purchasing station!

During these four days, we relied on the remaining diesel from the first round, plus the three hundred purchased later, which was almost gone.

After selling the fish, Liang Ziqiang directly filled up about 600 yuan of diesel at the fishing port, which would allow him to sustain himself for a week next time he goes out to sea.

In fact, with the fuel tank capacity of this ship, it is entirely possible to add more fuel until it is full, but ship owners heading to the deep sea usually do not do this.

Adding too much oil will increase the burden and make the boat more fuel-intensive.

Therefore, filling up the fuel and staying in the deep sea for twenty days or a month is not the best option for Liang Ziqiang's ship.

Unless it is absolutely necessary, he plans to stay for five or six days each time.

It cost more than 2,200 yuan, 600 yuan was used for diesel, and the four-day wages for five crew members was 108 yuan, leaving about 1,500 yuan.

Fifteen thousand is a huge sum of money these days. Liang Ziqiang is going to the city to sell shark fins and buy things, so he definitely can't carry such a large sum of money around.

Fortunately, there were several locks on the underground level, and the locks were very strong, and Liang Ziqiang had the keys. He kept a few of them for use, and locked the remaining more than a thousand in the tool cabin on the underground level.

After leaving the county fishing port, we immediately set sail for Sham Shui Po.

While the shark fins are still fresh, we must take them to Du Ziteng. This is the essence, the truly valuable part...

(Tiger shark picture, posted in the "Chapter Comments" section below)

(End of this chapter)