1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 342 Deadly Bad Habits

On the third day at sea, several people were still hoping that the eye-catching green figure would appear again in the trawl, but it did not appear.

On the afternoon of the third day, the net was relatively pure, mainly bluefin bream. This small fish is very common in the deep sea and is also one of the main foods for many large fish. For example, Bryde's whales like it very much.

This time, the whole net of small bluefish was more than the ones he snatched from the mouth of the Bryde's whale when he first returned to the deep sea.

"Wait, there's a big fish stuck in there! What is this? Is it a sturgeon?"

"It's really Miyu, Aqiang, you posted it, come and see it, I got Miyu today!"

Several people immediately shouted into the cab.

Liang Ziqiang took over the driving position again and ran out of the cab.

Just as he looked over, another fish weighing about ten pounds slipped from mid-air and landed on the deck where fish were sorted.

The fish's body is oval, with a slightly purple back and sides in gray-brown, and a white belly. The fish's dorsal fin is dark green with a dark stripe in the middle of the fin.

It's the sturgeon!

The sturgeon is also known as the croaker and the sensitive fish. Fishermen sometimes pronounce it as "mi fish".

As the saying goes, "If you have money, eat croaker, if you don't have money, don't eat it", but in fact, many people think that its meat is a bit rough and not delicious.

The reason why it is valuable is mainly because of the stuff in its stomach, the fish bladder.

The maw of sturgeon has always been a very important medicinal ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. Although the fish maw of ordinary sturgeon cannot be compared with the yellow lip fish maw, it is also a delicacy that rich people compete to eat.

We were still hoping for more parrotfish to arrive, but now, by comparison, parrotfish are obviously not as attractive as sturgeons.

In fact, most of the time, sturgeons prefer to "wade in muddy water", that is, they tend to appear in relatively turbid waters. Liang Ziqiang really didn't expect that sturgeons would suddenly appear in the large trawl today.

Like Bryde's whales, cod fish also prefer to eat bluefish. Considering the whole net of bluefish, it is likely that the bluefish attracted the cod fish.

Liang Ziqiang stared at the fish that kept pouring out of the net. He was not only hoping for more sturgeons, but also hoping for a particularly large sturgeon, which would be a real fortune.

Because the bigger the sturgeon is, the bigger its maw is. When the sturgeon gets big enough, its price can make a qualitative leap!
I kept staring until the entire net of fish was emptied, and found that there was a largest fish among them, weighing about twenty kilograms.

Unfortunately, it is still not big enough. The particularly large sturgeons can grow to 70 or 80 kilograms, which is really a rare commodity.

A preliminary look revealed that there were six or seven sturgeons mixed in with the small green-scaled fish. Even if there were no extra-large, top-quality ones, these six or seven fish themselves would be worth a lot of money.

Trawl fishing in the deep sea is like a guessing game. You never know which net has more fish and which has less. You never know when the catch is mediocre and when a valuable catch will suddenly appear among the catches, giving your heart a surprise attack.

The following two days did not have any big surprises and were pretty standard.

But with the valuable catch of parrotfish on the first day and sturgeon on the third day, Liang Ziqiang was generally satisfied with this trip out to sea.

Moreover, this voyage lasted five days and was very smooth. Previously, the family was traumatized by the spoon flipping incident. Now it seems that we just need to pay a little attention to the folk customs and there is no need to be too picky.

The ship started its return voyage from the deep sea, and gradually the deep sea was left far behind, and the ship entered the transition zone between deep and shallow seas.

Going further, we entered the shallow sea area and occasionally saw other ships operating on the sea.

Not only were there a few small fishing boats casting their nets on the waves, but there was also a large ship approaching from the other direction.

"This ship is really big, much bigger than ours!" Zhu Tianpeng, who was standing at the bow and looking out, exclaimed. "I think it's more than 30 meters long?" Lin Liming also said.

"I seem to have seen this ship before. Look, it says Qingwei Group on it?" Deng Zhaocai said after taking a closer look.

Liang Ziqiang also saw that the big ship was more than 30 meters long, much longer and larger than his steel ship. In comparison, his ship looked smaller.

The structure of the ship was also very different from my steel ship. My ship had a conspicuous gantry and a stern slide, and it was obvious that it was a ship designed for trawling operations. But that ship didn't have these things, and looked much more normal, more like a merchant ship.

The words "Qingyi Group" were printed on the hull. Last time, Qingyi Group sent a ship free of charge to help Pengao County, its hometown, in typhoon disaster relief. It was also a large ship of more than 30 meters.

Liang Ziqiang couldn't be 100% sure whether it was the same one.

He glanced at the more majestic ship, and immediately slowed down his speed and adjusted his direction appropriately.

The two ships were still very far apart, but Liang Ziqiang did not dare to be careless and made preparations for avoidance in advance.

The concept of distance during the sailing of a large ship is different from that of an ordinary ship.

Several fishing boats wandering on the sea also dispersed to the side.

But at the same time, another small fishing boat had just put away its hand-cast net, and after seeing the large ship, it did something that Liang Ziqiang had not expected.

It was a wooden boat of only about five meters in length. Seeing a steel ship of more than thirty meters in length passing by on the sea, it actually became excited.

The small wooden boat immediately accelerated, maintaining a parallel trajectory with the large merchant ship, like a small grasshopper taking off, running on the water on one side of the merchant ship.

The big merchant ship was fast, but the small wooden boat was deliberately speeding up. For a moment, the two ships, one big and one small, seemed to be running side by side, and the big and small waves splashed up were like snow, drawing two straight snow lines on the sea.

"What is he going to do? Trying to get ahead of the big ship?!" Zhu Tianpeng noticed the scene of two ships running side by side in the distance and shouted.

"Damn, you want to compete with the big ship for good fortune, but with your small body, I don't know if you can win!" Deng Zhaocai also shouted.

"If we seize the bow of the big ship, we won't have to worry for three years!" Liang Chun also said.

The practice of grabbing the prize is not only a habit in their area, but also a common custom among fishermen in many places.

Some fishermen are particularly fond of racing against merchant ships. When they see a merchant ship appearing, they begin to race against it on the side of the sea, racing at full speed. They believe that if they succeed in surpassing the speed of the large merchant ship and running to the front of the water, they will be able to win three years of good luck.

To be honest, Liang Ziqiang doesn't like this custom.

Normally, there would be someone responsible for lookout at the bow of a large ship, like Zhu Tianpeng.

However, the lookouts cannot see the entire sea surface due to the structure of the large ship beneath their feet, which creates a blind spot.

The larger the ship, the larger the blind spot.

Within a certain range, the small boat can see the big ship, and it also takes it for granted that the big ship can also see itself, but in fact the big ship cannot see the small boat next to it.

Even if they suddenly see it, merchant ships and small fishing boats have different concepts of safe distance, and it takes time for large ships to take temporary measures. It takes time for the lookout to communicate with the boat driver, time for the brain to react and judge, and time for the steering wheel to operate and for the steering wheel to react.

By the time everything is done, the accident may have already happened.

In Liang Ziqiang's opinion, the custom of robbing merchant ships of their prizes is a purely bad habit, and a very dangerous one at that...

(End of this chapter)