Following Xiang Yang's order, all the crew members started moving.
Time is of the essence and every second saved could potentially save many more sea fish. Even Xu Fang came out from the operating room to lend a hand.
"Brother Yang, this fish is called butterfly fish, right? Is it expensive? I don't think there is much edible meat on it." Fang Youqun followed Xiang Yang in cleaning the butterfly fish and threw the fresh butterfly fish into the seawater tank.
"Nonsense, are these fish meant to be eaten?" Xiang Yang was carefully searching for the butterfly fish among a pile of catches.
If it's not an edible fish, then it must be an ornamental fish. Fang Youqun shrank his head and stopped talking.
Butterfly fish is a very famous ornamental fish, and few people who play with marine aquariums don’t play with butterfly fish.
The butterfly fish has a relatively flat, wide and thin body, and its brightly colored body resembles a beautiful butterfly, especially its well-developed pectoral fins, which, if stretched out, would look like a butterfly spreading its wings and flying.
"Hey, a red butterfly fish?" He Mingde suddenly picked up a butterfly fish with a light red body and raised his head and asked, "Xiaoyang, do you want to dive into the sea and take a look? There may be good things under this sea."
Xiang Yang knew what good things He Mingde was talking about.
Butterfly fish like to live in colorful coral reefs. They have developed camouflage skills relying on coral reefs. The color of their bodies can change according to the environment they are in, thus blending perfectly with the surrounding environment and not easily discovered by predators. If there are red butterfly fish, there is a high probability that there are red corals.
Xiang Yang took the pink butterfly fish from He Mingde's hand and pondered for a while.
The two men just stood there holding a dried red butterfly fish, not even paying attention to the catch on the deck.
"Forget it!" Xiang Yang thought for a moment before throwing the butterfly fish into the water tank and said in a deep voice: "No matter how valuable the red coral is, we don't need to take risks for a red coral."
Red coral is shaped like deer antlers and is a very precious treasure. In ancient times, the imperial beads used by emperors were made of red coral, and each one was priceless. However, it has now been listed as a first-class protected animal in the country.
Yes, yes, it is a first-class protected animal.
Red coral is not a plant, but a coral individual among the polyp-type colonial animals.
The skeleton of red coral is a branch-like complex. In the center of each branch there is a keratinous skeletal axis, and the soft tissue surrounds the skeleton and is distributed like deer antlers.
He Mingde was a little unwilling, "This is red coral."
Xiang Yang pulled He Mingde aside and said with a smile: "Uncle, don't worry if we don't catch any fish with one or two nets, because you know that if we catch fish in ten or even a hundred nets, we will make a profit. How come you don't understand the other principle? Red coral is something that cannot be caught. You can catch it ten or a hundred times, but if someone catches it once, we will lose money."
He Mingde was startled, then smiled bitterly, "I see. I didn't expect you to understand it better than me."
Xiang Yang smiled and went back to clean the catch.
"Brother Yang, do you think we can still keep this butterfly fish now that it's bitten?" Fang Youqun asked loudly, holding up a yellow butterfly fish.
"Let me see." Xiang Yang took the butterfly fish and looked at it carefully. The upper part of the tail had been torn by some ferocious sea fish. Although it has recovered now, it is no longer as beautiful as before.
"Keep it for now!" Xiang Yang threw it into the sea tank as well.
Fang Youqun was amazed. "I don't know what kind of stupid predator it is. It bites the tail instead of the butterfly fish's head when hunting it."
Xiang Yang pointed to the butterfly fish in the aquarium and said with a smile: "This is actually very normal. Look at the eyes of these butterfly fish."
Fang Youqun looked at the eyes of a butterfly fish and thought that the eyes of the butterfly fish were very beautiful because they were dotted with golden lines.
"The butterfly fish's eyes hidden in black or gold markings on their heads are more than just pretty; they are an important means of survival."
Xiang Yang pointed to a small black dot on the tail of a butterfly fish and said, "Look here, this is the butterfly fish's pseudo-eye. The butterfly fish hides the eyes on its head in the stripes, but has a pair of pseudo-eyes on its tail fin. When predators see the pseudo-eyes of the butterfly fish, they usually can't tell which is the head and which is the tail, and often attack the tail of the butterfly fish as if it were the head, so the butterfly fish can use this to escape."
Fang Youqun stared at the butterfly fish's false eye for a while and said in surprise, "Brother Yang, I wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't told me. Now that you mention it, it's true. The more I look at this little black spot, the more it looks like a fish eye."
Xiang Yang smiled and turned his head, continuing to stare at the catch.
When Xiang Yang turned around, he immediately saw a crew member preparing to twist with his bare hands a strange fish with a pointed mouth, a wide chin, a cylindrical body, and more than one meter long.
"Stop, stop!" Xiang Yang shouted immediately.
"Captain?" The crew member stood there in a daze, looking at Xiang Yang in confusion.
"Oh my goodness, it's such a big wolffish." Chen Qingsheng immediately looked over there after hearing the noise and exclaimed in surprise as soon as he saw it.
"Move aside, that's not how you catch wolffish." Chen Qingsheng pushed the crew member away. "Wolffish are fierce and aggressive, and the teeth in their mouths are just like wolf teeth. If you get bit by one, you'll definitely lose a piece of flesh from your hand."
The crew member was obviously unconvinced, "How can I be bitten by a fish on the deck?"
Chen Qingsheng was so angry at the crew member's words that he laughed, "If you don't believe me, go and try it. If you get bit, don't blame me for not warning you."
"Let's give it a try." The crew member was also bold and immediately grabbed the wolffish's head.
The wolffish, which was lying motionless on the ground and almost dead, suddenly became ferocious when it saw the crew approaching. It jumped up half a meter high with a sudden bounce of its waist, opened its big mouth with interlaced canine teeth, and bit the crew's arm.
The crew member was frightened and subconsciously slapped the wolf fish in the belly.
After being blown away, the wolf fish continued to struggle on the deck, and the crew member was immediately terrified.
"Haha, now you know how powerful it is, right?" Chen Qingsheng smiled and pressed the wolf fish's waist. "Copper head, iron tail, tofu waist, not only wolves are like this, wolf fish are like this too. To catch a wolf fish, you have to grab its waist."
"Stop wasting time. You've been wasting time on just one wolffish. All the hatchetfish are going to die." He Mingde shouted.
"Right away." Chen Qingsheng quickly threw the wolf fish into a large water tank, and then shouted to all the crew members: "Be careful when you see a wolf fish, don't get bitten by its teeth. If you don't dare to catch it, use a fish rake to scrape it, or leave it for me to clean up at the end."
Xiang Yang nodded slightly after hearing what Chen Qingsheng said. There was nothing wrong with what Chen Qingsheng said. Wolffish is a kind of marine fish with a similar price to tigerfish, but wolffish is far less easy to clean than hatchetfish. Now that manpower is so tight, of course they have to give priority to cleaning hatchetfish which are easier to clean.