Chen Qingsheng and his men dug out dead trees one by one from the mud.
Unfortunately, the formation conditions of beeswax are very harsh. In the end, Xiang Yang was unable to find a second piece of beeswax.
However, Fang Youqun, who was both lazy and energetic, took a few people and found an unknown sea clam under the sea at the edge of the deserted island.
From the appearance, these clams are about the size of ordinary clams, and are not even considered fat.
But after opening the clams, he found that there were pearls inside, and there were not many pearls in each clam shell. The quality of each pearl was very high, and the color of these pearls was also very strange. At first glance, they were black, which almost made Xiang Yang excited. But upon closer inspection, he found that these pearls were not real black pearls, but looked black because the color was too dark.
In fact, these pearls are dark green or dark blue, each one exudes a strong pearly luster, and the core is not transparent.
Generally speaking, there are only five colors of pearls in nature: white, black, orange, gold and pink. Green pearls and blue pearls are both artificially cultivated.
Xiang Yang was also surprised to see the dark green natural pearls.
Xiang Yang immediately ordered all crew members to give up digging the dead wood and go into the sea to salvage these strange pearl oysters.
Although Xiang Yang had never seen this kind of dark green pearls, he knew that as a natural renewable jewelry, the standard for evaluating its value is market demand.
This kind of dark green pearl looks noble and beautiful at first glance, and most of them are full and round in appearance. The most important thing is that the market believes that scarcity makes things valuable. These dark green pearls are so rare that they must be a good thing.
The crew members swarmed into the sea and grabbed the clam shells one by one into the net bag.
The crew did not even spare the dead clams.
Because many times, the clam shell dies, but the pearl remains.
The crew members opened the dead clam shells one by one, took out the pearls inside, and then threw them into the net bag.
In addition to dark green and dark blue pearls, some people have also found a kind of pink pearl.
"This is strange." Xiang Yang pinched a pink pearl between two fingers, put it under the sun and looked at it carefully, his eyes full of confusion.
"What's wrong, Captain?" Chen Qingsheng asked curiously, "Isn't this just an ordinary pink pearl?"
"No." Xiang Yang shook his head. "Natural pearls cannot be so full. Moreover, this color looks pink, but it is actually white with red. This is a sign of a core. And look at this pearl. The color gets darker as you go deeper into it, and the layers are distinct. This is definitely a cultured pearl."
"Is there such a thing?" Chen Qingsheng took the pearl in disbelief. "But this is indeed a deserted island. The nearest continent is at least several hundred kilometers away. Who would raise pearl oysters here?"
Xiang Yang pondered for a moment. They were now almost approaching the East China Sea.
The East China Sea has always been my country's most important seafood producing area, with numerous fishing grounds and a wide variety of fish species. Most of the fishing boats are also concentrated in the East China Sea.
In the past decade or so, due to the continuous and illegal discharge of industrial wastewater from inland waters into the East China Sea, coupled with overfishing by neighboring countries and nuclear waste pollution, the fishery resources of the entire East China Sea have decreased dramatically.
Last year, the price of saury, one of the mainstays of our neighboring country's aquatic products, more than tripled. The reason is that saury is no longer available in one of the main production areas of the East China Sea.
The depletion of fishery resources in the East China Sea is not as serious as reported on self-media platforms, saying that there is not a single fish to be seen for thousands of miles in the entire East China Sea.
However, with the increasing amount of marine garbage, white garbage, nuclear waste and industrial wastewater in recent years, the fishery resources in the East China Sea have indeed decreased.
Take Zhoushan Fishery for example.
The Zhoushan fishing ground used to be a world-class top fishing ground, on par with the Newfoundland fishing ground and the Peruvian fishing ground. After each fishing moratorium, the ships passing through the Zhoushan fishing ground were constantly sailing day and night, a true race between thousands of ships and hundreds of boats.
The rich fishery resources of Zhoushan fishing grounds were even written into geography textbooks and appeared in college entrance examination questions.
However, today, Zhoushan fishing ground is truly abandoned.
Yellow croaker, once one of the most important economic fish in Zhoushan fishing grounds, has now been listed as a protected animal in many provinces and its fishing is strictly prohibited.
In recent years, some great figures have shouted the slogan of "both mountains of gold and silver and green mountains and clear waters". The discharge of industrial wastewater and the amount of white garbage have decreased sharply, allowing the fishery resources of the East China Sea to recover some vitality.
But the marine garbage that has already sunk to the bottom of the sea and floated throughout the East China Sea cannot be recovered in a short period of time.
Even marine debris is so difficult to deal with, let alone nuclear waste.
It is simply impossible to completely restore the fishery resources and marine ecological environment of the entire East China Sea.
"These clams around this deserted island were probably released here by some fishermen when the fishery resources in the East China Sea were abundant in the past. Later, the fishery resources in the East China Sea were exhausted, and the fishermen who released these pearl clams may have switched to aquaculture and sold their fishing boats, so they gradually forgot about this batch of pearl clams. I didn't expect that we would pick up a bargain a few days ago." Xiang Yang guessed.
"Ah?" Chen Qingsheng's face fell. "It turns out that we have been fishing for so long, and these are all farmed clams?"
As we all know, although natural pearls and cultured pearls are both pearls, their prices are very different.
If it is a natural pearl this full, the price would be based on a certain amount per gram.
But if it is cultured pearls, at most one would cost no more than a few hundred yuan, and the cheaper ones would even cost only a few dozen or ten yuan each.
As the demand for pearls increases day by day, more and more people are cultivating pearls, which makes cultured pearls less and less valuable.
In the year 2000, a pearl necklace produced by Akoya, a well-known brand of cultured pearls, could be sold for tens of thousands of yuan in Guangzhou.
By the year 2020, a string of Akoya pearl necklace was sold for just over 900 yuan on a certain e-commerce platform.
"There aren't so many natural pearls for you to pick up." Xiang Yang smiled. "This deserted island has been abandoned for at least five years. These pearls are all very large. There are very few cultured pearls that are this large. Just be content."
Hearing this, Chen Qingsheng also laughed, "Yes, I got a bargain and acted like a spoiled child. But, Captain, how much do you think these pearls can be sold for?"
He looked at the one in his hand carefully and shook his head, saying, "It's hard to estimate, but such a large particle should be worth at least a few hundred yuan each."