After the popularity of A Bite of China, documentary channels began to shoot various food documentaries.
One of the documentaries, called "Cai Lan's Vegetable Basket Tour", filmed Chaozhou fish balls during the Chaozhou cuisine segment.
At that time, the Didixiang Fish Ball Shop in Dahao demonstrated the whole process of making fish balls, and the raw materials they selected were all snakehead mullet.
Later, some people commented that it was because the Chaozhou people discovered the cheap and good quality snakehead mullet that Chaoshan fish balls could be mass-produced and eventually became famous both at home and abroad.
"Clean up and freeze all the snakehead mullets. Freeze the remaining cheap fish as well. Keep the valuable ones in live water tanks. Keep the particularly rare fish in water tanks. If you come across unfamiliar marine fish, call me immediately." Xiang Yang personally untied the fishing net, picked up a few snakehead mullets that were two palms long and put them in a foam wooden box.
This kind of fish is really heavy, their meat is very firm, and their weight is much greater than that of ordinary marine fish. Just the few snakehead mullets that Xiang Yang picked up just now weigh several kilograms each.
"The harvest from this net is pretty good. Although snakehead mullet is not very valuable, it is very heavy. We may get more than 10,000 kilograms of snakehead mullet in this net. It should be no problem to sell it wholesale for 70,000 or 80,000 yuan." He Mingde walked over and said.
Xiang Yang nodded, agreeing with He Mingde's statement.
Snakehead mullet is usually sold at around ten yuan per pound in the market, but because it is a top-quality material for making fish balls, its price is not very cheap when it is wholesaled. It can be sold for seven or eight yuan per pound, and there are people who buy it, which is much better than squid.
"Overall it's pretty good. Everyone should work harder. After cleaning up this batch of fish, we will try to catch another net in the morning." Xiang Yang said with a smile.
"Ah? Still fishing?" Some crew members felt their scalp tingling when they saw the deck full of snakehead mullets. These snakehead mullets weighed more than ten thousand kilograms, plus some other fish and ice. If you counted them all, each of them had to clean and carry nearly a thousand kilograms of things.
Some people who have moved goods would say that it is very easy to move 1,000 kilograms of things in a morning, especially those who carry gas tanks and mineral water bottles and unload large trucks, who may move more than 1,000 kilograms of things in an hour.
In fact, cleaning fish is far less easy than moving cargo. Picking up fish on the deck is much more tiring than moving the fish from the deck to the cold storage.
"If you clean up all the fish within an hour, you will get a 200 yuan bonus. If you clean up all the fish within an hour and a half, you will get a 100 yuan bonus." I laughed and shouted, "Do you want a 200 yuan bonus or a 100 yuan bonus?"
"Fuck, boss, please get out of the way and don't block my way."
As soon as the crew heard Xiang Yang say there was a bonus, their enthusiasm was immediately aroused and they all tried their best.
Even Zhou Wang, who never helped clean the fish before, was helping to deliver the foam boxes. While delivering the foam boxes to the sailors, he asked Xiang Yang: "Captain, the "all people" you mentioned should include me, Old Zhou, right?"
"How can we leave out Master Zhou?" Xiang Yang would naturally not show favoritism over such a small matter. Moreover, Zhou Wang played a very important role on this ship. Xiang Yang could not compare with him in controlling the entire set of fishing equipment. At least so far, there had not been any accidents caused by operational errors after casting the nets so many times.
Zhou Wang was actually just joking. As a skilled worker his salary was much higher than that of the average crew member. He didn't really care about the bonus of one or two hundred yuan, but only a fool would not take the money. He smiled at Xiang Yang and joined the army that cleaned up the fish.
"Captain, come and see this fish." Fang Youqun shouted loudly at this time.
"What's wrong?" Xiang Yang hurried over.
"Is this a trilobite? I've seen it on TV." Fang Youqun pointed at a strange fish and asked loudly.
That strange fish really looked like a trilobite fossil, and it seemed that there was only a shell left on its body, without even a bit of meat. But the strange thing was that the fish was still alive.
"Nonsense, this is not a trilobite, it's a Chinese horseshoe crab." Xiang Yang recognized the strange fish at a glance.
"Chinese horseshoe crab?" Fang Youqun asked in confusion, "I've only heard of the Chinese soft-shelled turtle."
"There are so many fish you haven't heard of." Xiang Yang picked up the Chinese horseshoe crab and threw it back into the sea.
"Hey, Brother Yang, what are you doing?" Fang Youqun shouted hurriedly.
"Even if you haven't seen this kind of fish, you should have seen the short videos of people going to the beach, right?" Xiang Yang said speechlessly, "Many people who go to the beach on self-media have encountered this kind of marine creature. It is a national second-class protected animal, so people who go to the beach have released it back into the sea."
"Going to the beach?" Fang Youqun asked doubtfully.
Xiang Yang shook his head, too lazy to say more.
"Hey, there's another one here." At this time, another crew member also found a Chinese horseshoe crab. He picked up the Chinese horseshoe crab and looked at it in front of his eyes. He turned his head and looked at Xiang Yang and said, "Captain, it looks very strange. It is somewhat similar to the corpse-eating bugs in "Grave Robbers' Chronicles."
"Put it back into the sea. There are not many creatures like this left." Xiang Yang sighed.
Horseshoe crab is an ancient marine creature that lived on Earth as early as the Devonian period more than 300 million years ago. It still retains its original form today and can be called an ancient relic of the ocean. It is an animal of the same period as trilobites. Despite hundreds of millions of years of vicissitudes, this species has remained the same with little change, so it is known as a "living fossil".
The Chinese horseshoe crab is a very representative species of horseshoe crabs. Its body is composed of three parts. The cephalothorax is slightly horseshoe-shaped, the abdomen is hexagonal with spines on both sides, and the tail is a long tail sword. They usually like to live on the sandy seabed of shallow seas. They are an omnivorous marine fish that feeds on small insects and shellfish in the sea, and sometimes also eats algae on the seabed.
Every summer is the breeding season. Chinese horseshoe crabs swim from the sea to the sandy beaches in the intertidal zone near the coast. Males and females gather together, and the females dig nests in the sand.
When the tide recedes, the fertilized eggs buried in the sand will no longer be underwater, allowing them to safely avoid aquatic predators. This is why Chinese horseshoe crabs are often seen when going to the beach, and usually two are seen at the same time.
It is winter now, not the spawning season for Chinese horseshoe crabs, so Xiang Yang discovered them far away from the shore.
"Captain, are you really going to throw it back into the sea?" At this time, Chen Qingsheng came over and said, "I noticed that Chinese horseshoe crabs are also sold in ordinary pharmacies, right?"
The medicinal value of the Chinese horseshoe crab is extremely high. Its meat, shell and tail can all be used as medicine. It is no exaggeration to say that its entire body is a treasure, so you can usually see them in pharmacies.