Soon, Xiang Yang brought the little purple starfish to the surface of the sea.
"How is it? Mr. Xiang, are you satisfied with this reef?" Boss Zhang asked Xiang Yang with a smile.
"Not very satisfied." Xiang Yang took off his diving equipment and placed the palm-sized purple starfish on the coffee table. "I found this on the seabed."
"Huh? Starfish?" Wu Shiwen's face changed, and the look he gave the boss became strange.
Boss Zhang picked up the purple starfish from the table naturally. "So this is the cause of the trouble. No wonder I sent so many people down there but couldn't find any symptoms. Purple starfish like to hide in deep waters, run fast, and hide during the day and come out at night."
Xiang Yang took a sip of tea. "If it is in the water, it will cause great losses to fishermen, especially to some farmers. It is the natural enemy of shellfish and abalone. Shellfish is the main food for farmers to farm fish, and abalone is the lifeblood of farmers. No wonder you, Boss Zhang, would leave such a precious land unused."
The five horns on the purple sea star can open up all shelled creatures. It can also secrete digestive enzymes to kill shelled creatures including crabs bit by bit, and then suck dry the tissues of its prey. With it on the seabed, there is basically no need to consider farming abalone.
Boss Zhang sighed, "No wonder all the abalone seedlings I released are left with only a shell. It turns out it was caused by these purple sea stars. With these purple sea stars around, it seems like abalone can't be raised anymore."
Xiang Yang looked at Boss Zhang without saying anything.
Boss Zhang continued, "But since you've gone down there, you should have seen it. This whole area is actually a huge coral reef, which is very suitable for raising grouper. Grouper is not cheap."
Xiang Yang smiled and shook his head, saying, "It's easy to raise groupers, but how do you catch them when they grow big? There are coral reefs everywhere below, and we can't even cast a net. We'll have to spend a lot of effort to catch the groupers. If it's a good year, we can still make some hard-earned money, but if there's a typhoon or something else unexpected, we'll lose everything, both the money for the fry and the contract fee."
"There are risks, but you can also make money. I'm old and don't want to take the risk. Mr. Xiang, you're a young man, you shouldn't be unwilling to take such a small risk, right?" Boss Zhang said with a smile.
"It's not that I don't want to take the risk, it's just that the risk is not proportional to the reward. This amount of money is enough for me to buy another large fishing boat."
If we get a large fishing boat, we can catch more fish every time we go out, and we can make money much faster than this.
Of course, the advantage of aquaculture lies in its stability, while fishing still relies on the sea for livelihood.
"Well, I'll give you a better price, sixty-five years and ten million. And the two fishing boats parked over there will also be yours. What do you think?" asked Boss Zhang.
Xiang Yang took a look at the sea. The two fishing boats were small and medium-sized fishing boats, not as big as the first boat Xiang Yang bought. They were okay for working in this sea area, but it was unrealistic to go out to the open sea.
Ten million should be Zhang's bottom price.
"To be honest, I am quite tempted, but there is no way to deal with the purple starfish on the seabed. This reef can only be used to raise groupers. For me, the profit from groupers is still a little small." He declined politely.
Xiang Yang can indeed dive to the bottom of the sea.
But if Xiang Yang dived to the bottom of the sea to catch purple starfish by himself, it would be like catching fleas on a dog. It would take him an eternity to catch all the purple starfish.
As for the natural enemies of starfish
Once a starfish reaches adulthood, it has almost no natural enemies, with only seagulls occasionally preying on it.
In fact, the biggest enemy of the purple starfish is the sun starfish.
But the Chaoyang starfish is also a natural enemy of abalone.
As a single individual, no creature can be considered a natural enemy of a starfish.
But race does.
If there is a group of tiger crabs whose number is not much different from that of the starfish population, the tiger crabs will mobilize the entire force of the clan to encircle and suppress the starfish, killing all the starfish in the entire sea area, not even sparing a single tentacle, until one of them is completely dead.
But if the number of tiger crabs is slightly smaller than that of starfish, the tiger crabs will only migrate as a whole group and will not compete with the starfish at all.
Where could Xiang Yang find so many tiger crabs to compete with a group of purple sea stars that had been breeding for who knows how many years and had plenty of food
If you spend money to buy it, I'm afraid even one hundred million won't be enough.
"Alas." Boss Zhang sighed, "These damn starfish."
It can be seen that this boss really hates those starfishes.
If the water under the reef was shallower, Xiang Yang would have no doubt that Boss Zhang would spend a lot of money to hire people to go underwater and kill all those starfish.
Starfish are more difficult to deal with than cockroaches.
Adult starfish have skin covered with tiny tentacles that attack anything that disturbs them, and they also clean their skin to avoid parasites.
The most outrageous thing is that there is a species called sand starfish. If someone tries to catch them with their hands, they will explode like a balloon and instantly blow themselves into countless pieces. Then after a while, these pieces will turn into countless small starfish.
The ability of Majin Buu in "Dragon Ball" to explode and transform into countless Little Buus was based on starfish.
Wu Shiwen hesitated for a while before speaking: "In fact, I think we can use buoys to surround the entire reef. As long as the starfish cannot get into the reef, then these starfish will naturally be solved."
Boss Zhang looked at Wu Shiwen, holding the teacup gently without saying anything.
Xiang Yang shook his head. "That's simply unrealistic. There are several typhoons in this area every year. It wouldn't cost much to fence it off once, but are you going to fence it off several times a year?"
There are too many limitations to reef aquaculture.
Otherwise, such clear sea water would not be only suitable for raising groupers and abalone.
Because if I raise other fish, they will all run away.
"Mr. Xiang, it seems that you also know a lot about aquaculture." Boss Zhang said with a smile.
Xiang Yang shook his head. "I know a little bit about common sense, but I don't understand the real technical stuff."
"I wonder if Mr. Xiang is interested in working with me?" Boss Zhang said with a smile.
"Cooperation? How do we cooperate?" Xiang Yang asked.
"In fact, there is no problem that humans cannot solve. Although those starfish are difficult to deal with, if I really want to solve them, it is not completely impossible. It's just that I am really old and I really don't have such ambitions now. I don't want to stay on the sea anymore. Mr. Xiang, are you interested in buying this reef? I have someone who understands the technology. After cleaning up those starfish, you only need to buy some fish fry every year, and then you can sit back and collect the money."