1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 403: One in a Million Blue Dragon
The deep blue satin-like sea is endless. Three steel ships are cruising in the deep sea, like giant pens, writing three floating white lines on the satin.

Liang Ziqiang was driving the earliest "Ziqiang" ship, and Liang's father stood at the bow to look out. The other five people on the ship, except Zhou Hui, who had been out to sea with Liang Ziqiang twice, were all newly hired. One was from the village, and the other was from Xiaolang Village.

"Let's start, let out the trawl!" Liang Ziqiang stuck his head out of the glass window of the cab and shouted.

Liang's father replaced Zhou Hui to go to the bow to look out, while he himself walked to the operating station at the front of the ship and began to operate the winch.

After all, Liang's father had been a fisherman for decades, and had been asked to help out on state-owned ships many times before, so he was quite skilled in operating the trawl winch. In addition, Liang Ziqiang had recently asked him to operate it in shallow waters a few times, and his previous experience with the winch was very useful, allowing him to get the hang of it right away.

The other two boats also dropped huge nets one after another. The one driving the "Zhongqiang" was Zhu Tianpeng, his partner Liang Chun, and other ordinary crew members; the one driving the "Boqiang" was Lu Song, his partner Lin Liming, and other crew members.

Each ship now has seven people, including the captain, the first mate and ordinary crew members. Compared with the previous "six-person team", there is one more person, so the work can be done relatively calmly.

Two large steel trawlers come to the deep sea together, and they can actually carry out "double trawling" operations, that is, a larger trawl net is stretched between the two ships. The two ships work together in a balanced manner, dragging the large net across the sea.

When three vessels are together, they can work together to carry out "encirclement and trawling", the nets can be made larger, and the scale of trawling will naturally be more amazing.

However, both double towing and encircling towing are extremely challenging for the tacit understanding between the vessels. Liang Ziqiang believes that the tacit understanding between the vessels is not yet at that level, so he has not considered double towing or encircling towing recently, and each vessel is still carrying out single towing operations.

The entire sea surface looked quiet and there were not many valuable big fish jumping out of the water.

Liang Ziqiang originally thought that this was the first time the fleet went out for battle, and the harvest would be uneventful. However, three hours later, the fish were dumped onto the deck where the fish were sorted, which was a pleasant surprise.

In addition to common fish such as bluefin bream, bluefin bream and golden pomfret, there are also a lot of shrimps.

Some of them are white shrimps and green shrimps, as well as the cheapest hair shrimps and mysid shrimps.

But more importantly, lobster!

Although they are called lobsters, they actually have claws. Fishermen are used to calling them lobsters, but strictly speaking, they are a type of crayfish. The real lobsters do not have claws, but only long whiskers, such as rock lobsters and spiny lobsters.

These are somewhat similar to the deep-sea lobsters that Liang Ziqiang caught last year.

As the seafood market continues to rise this year, deep-sea lobsters are now sold at two yuan per catty, and the price of smooth shrimp has increased from one yuan and a half in 83 to one yuan and sixty yuan. Not to mention the most outrageous prawns, which are already twelve yuan.

Although the lobsters in front of me cannot compare with those mentioned above, their current prices are at least a little over one dollar, which is much better than hair shrimps, mysid shrimps, sardines, herrings and the like.

The quantity seems to be quite large, so I estimate the income from selling it online should not be too low.

With so many lobsters, they must be separated from other hair shrimps and white shrimps and put into different baskets when sorting them.

The crew members were also very active, thinking about freeing up the area for sorting fish before the first net was brought on board, so they all brought baskets and immersed themselves in selecting and sorting shrimps.

"Look, there's a freak hidden inside the lobster. It's super fat and blue, just like it was dyed!"

A novice crew member named Fan Weixing was sorting the fish when he suddenly shouted.

Liang Ziqiang couldn't leave the cabin for the time being because he had no one to replace him in driving the boat. But when he heard the shout, he leaned out of the window and shouted to Fan Weixing:
"Blue? Bring it in so I can see it!"

Fan Weixing ran over with the lobster in his hand, trying to avoid the other's big claws with his hands, as if he was afraid of being pinched. When Fan Weixing came closer, Liang Ziqiang turned his head and looked at him, and his eyes could not be taken away.

This lobster was even bigger than he had imagined, and it was estimated to be more than a pound. The most peculiar thing was that from the body to the claws, the whole body of the lobster was dark blue, as if it was wearing "enamel blue" armor.

"Fallen Dragon?!" After taking a closer look, Liang Ziqiang was sure of it.

This pure and somewhat translucent color, this shape, is exactly the blue dragon!

The place where blue lobsters are most common is Brittany, which is why they are called "French blue dragons".

But in fact, in addition to Britain, France and other places, French blue lobsters also exist in other waters of the world. For example, there are blue lobsters in the South China Sea, but they are extremely rare.

In fact, blue lobsters are extremely rare everywhere, with an average of more than two million lobsters to find only one blue one.

This level of rarity is no less than that of our country's Splendid lobster.

The price is comparable to that of a large lobster. Liang Ziqiang remembered that he caught a lobster two years ago, which weighed only half a pound and sold it to Du Ziteng for fifty yuan.

The blue lobster in front of me is estimated to weigh more than one kilogram. The value of this one alone must be at least three figures!

"It's still alive, that's the best. Go put it in a basin and see if there are any more among the pile of lobsters!" Liang Ziqiang quickly gave the order after confirming.

Although he knew that it was unlikely that two of a species that was only one in two or three million would appear on the ship at the same time, he still held out some hope and asked them to continue looking.

Unfortunately, until the afternoon, when the second net of fish was hauled aboard and all the fish and shrimp from the morning net were finally sorted out, there was still no sign of the second blue dragon.

At night, the three large steel ships no longer maintained their "品"-shaped operating formation, but came closer together and found a sea area to spend the night.

Zhu Tianpeng and Lu Song also briefly talked about the gains from the two ships.

Since they are all in the same sea area, although the distance is not far, the types of fish caught are also similar.

In addition to the common and relatively cheap sea fish, the Zhongqiang and Boqiang also caught a lot of lobsters today, but they did not encounter the one-in-a-million blue dragon.

The slight difference is that in addition to lobsters, the Zhongqiang ship also picked out some deep-sea crayfish, almost a basket full.

The Boqiang caught more swimming crabs than the other two ships, filling more than half a basket.

The next day, the three ships continued to line up, like plowing the sea.

In the afternoon, suddenly cheers were heard from afar on the "Boqiang" boat driven by Lu Song.

It looked like they had some unusual good harvest. However, they were a bit far away from each other, so they could only hear the excited noises, but they couldn't tell what good things they had dragged out...

(End of this chapter)