Sardines need to be caught using small boats.
If it is a big boat, the fishermen cannot see the fish at all due to the limited vision.
When Xiang Yang was a child, he once saw fishermen catching sardines in small boats.
Hundreds of small fishing villages were linked together in a line, with vast fishing nets surrounding a group of sardines.
Now, although there are several small lifeboats on Xiang Yang's big ship, the number is too few, and it would be more convenient to use the big ship directly.
Soon, the three fishing boats cast their nets together and then dragged their nets forward, forming three long waves on the sea.
The tropical sea breeze is very warm and feels very comfortable on your face.
Xiang Yang stood at the bow, feeling the sea breeze and taking a sip of ice drink, enjoying himself very much.
Soon, amid the rolling waves, the fishing net began to be slowly pulled out of the sea.
“Crash.”
As the fishing nets were untied, huge amounts of sardines piled up on the deck like small mountains.
"When this sardine was in the sea, it looked dark blue. How come it turned silvery white when it got on the deck?" Fang Youqun wondered.
Xiang Yang smiled and said, "No matter what color it is, there are so many catches, hurry up and get people to clean them all up."
"Yes, Brother Yang." Fang Youqun quickly led people to the cabin to move foam boxes and crushed ice.
It is definitely impossible to bring all of these sardines back alive.
Most of them will be processed into fish meal or canned fish, a small portion will be wrapped in ice and brought back to the shore, and only a very small number of large ones will be placed in the live water tank and brought to the shore alive.
All the crew members went out, and some of them, led by Fang Youqun, threw the sardines into the foam box and covered it with crushed ice.
Led by Xia Pengjie, a group of people transported the sardines into the live water tank.
Even the people in the engine room, under Zhou Wang's organization, began to look for the larger sardines one by one.
Xiang Yang looked at the busy crew members and felt embarrassed to just stand there and watch, so he went up to help.
Speaking of which, sardines are actually a very important part of the marine ecological environment. Not only does their meat taste delicious, they are also ocean purifiers.
Sardines will help humans remove toxic gases near coasts, saving certain areas from the threat of becoming marine dead zones.
Writing in the journal Ecological Research, researchers report that hungry sardines will clear out phytoplankton in Namibian waters, reducing the production of toxic gases in the area.
This phenomenon will have a profound impact on alleviating global warming.
For as much as a century, toxic sulfur dioxide gases have been found spreading in the waters off Namibia's Atlantic coast, often accompanied by the die-offs of large numbers of fish and marine crustaceans.
Only in recent years have researchers begun to carefully study the emissions of methane and hydrogen sulfide gases beneath the surface of the sea.
From satellite images, people can also clearly see that the special blue-green sea area in the region is similar in size to the total area of New Jersey in the United States.
Many scientists believe the gas is released by the decay of phytoplankton, which covers the ocean floor in mud several meters deep.
Two years ago, Andrew Baku, a researcher from the University of Miami in Florida, and Sklar Vickers, a researcher from Kemp City University in South Africa, simultaneously discovered that there was a clear pause in the trend of this gas emission.
They later determined that the pause occurred during the same period as the local sardine breeding season.
They calculated that millions of sardines ate phytoplankton that were about to drift toward the coastline, thereby reducing gas emissions.
Baku stressed that the link between the two phenomena needs further proof, but said Namibia's experience carries a serious warning for other regions, such as Morocco and California.
These areas also have similar nearshore waters suitable for the growth of phytoplankton. Global warming will promote the large-scale reproduction of phytoplankton, and these sea areas will become future marine life death zones.
"Imagine how much more greenhouse gas emissions such as methane and sulfur dioxide would be added to the atmosphere if sardine fishing were doubled," Baku said.
So from an environmental perspective, Xiang Yang also does not approve of large-scale fishing of sardines.
If what they encountered this time was not such a large school of sardines, Xiang Yang would not have given the order to catch one hundred tons.
Even when encountering such a large tribe, Xiang Yang only ordered a catch of 100 tons.
The number of one hundred tons sounds very scary, but in fact, compared with three huge fishing ships of one thousand tons, a mere one hundred tons of sardines is nothing.
"Captain, I think we can still catch another net. The number of sardines around us is not only not decreasing, but is actually increasing." Zhou Wang shouted loudly to Xiang Yang while cleaning the catch.
Xiang Yang looked around and shouted, "Let's clean up the catch on the deck first."
As he spoke, Xiang Yang put down the two sardines in his hand, stood up, walked to the side, washed his hands with clean water, took out the walkie-talkie and started calling Chen Qingsheng.
"Boss, are you looking for me?" On another boat, Chen Qingsheng saw Xiang Yang calling him and quickly picked up the walkie-talkie and replied.
"How many sardines did you catch in that net just now?" Xiang Yang asked Chen Qingsheng.
When Chen Qingsheng heard that Xiang Yang was asking this, he immediately became excited and quickly answered loudly: "Captain, what a great harvest. You don't know about the net just now. Our captain now has a pile of sardines like a small mountain. Conservative estimates are at least 60 to 70 tons. This number will only be more, definitely not less."
Xiang Yang nodded. This number was similar to what Xiang Yang estimated.
Chen Qingsheng's fishing boat can catch more than 100 tons of fish with one net.
There are schools of sardines gathered here. Once the net is cast, it will be full.
Because of the size of the mesh of the fishing net, some smaller sardines would slip through the mesh, and in the end the net was able to catch just about sixty to seventy tons of sardines.
"Okay, you take your men to clean up the sardines on the deck quickly. It's best to freeze them all. It's best to send the larger ones to my boat." Xiang Yang said.
The price of some larger sardines is different from that of ordinary sardines.
If you freeze them in foam boxes and sell them as ordinary fresh food, it would be such a waste.
Chen Qingsheng's drift net boat only had storage and freezing compartments, but no live water compartments, so some of the larger sardines could not survive, so sending them to Xiang Yang's processing mothership was the best option. (To be continued)