Chapter 241: Hauling in the Gill Net

When it was pulled up to the surface and he saw the familiar huge white figure, his whole being turned sour and he couldn't help cursing.

"Dammit, can jellyfish actually be caught on a hook? Wasted Laozi's energy hauling it up for so long, dammit…"

He brought the line right up to his mouth and bit through it hard—this branch line was done for, no point wasting more energy, dammit…

His father had watched him struggling so hard earlier and thought it must be some big catch, excitedly leaning over the gunwale to look—only to find it was a jellyfish, and was speechless too.

"It probably just happened to swim past and got tangled on your hook so it couldn't get free."

"Bad luck! Dad, you take the helm. I'll go set the net. Once it's down, we'll cook some noodles."

"Mm."

Using two kinds of nets to cover and complement each other just costs a bit of manpower. At this time engines weren't yet widespread—most still relied on human power. A boat like his could really only be called a small boat; only a few vessels were fitted with any simple equipment.

After lowering the net, Ye Yaodong started arranging the rice noodle cooking again. He'd eaten rice noodles in the wee hours, and by now he was starving.

He'd originally planned to boil a few mantis shrimp and shrimp to tide himself over after hauling the trawl, but who knew he'd run into the oarfish and gotten delayed, and then forgot. By the time he finished hauling in the rock longline it was already noon, and he was so hungry his chest was stuck to his back.

Same as in the morning—rice noodle soup, just with a few more mantis shrimp and the shrimp they'd just scooped up, making it even fresher and tastier.

The broth in the pot kept rolling and rolling. Father and son each cradled a bowl, using chopsticks to fish out the noodles—finish one bowl, then ladle out another.

"Tomorrow remember to pull two stalks of celery. With celery it's even more fragrant."

"Mm, forgot this morning. Just hacked off a cabbage, broke off a few leaves, washed them, and rushed off."

After Ye Yaodong finished the noodles in his bowl and drank every drop of the broth, he refilled a bowl of soup. The sea wind was strong—drinking soup warms the body, can't waste it.

His father did the same—poured the remaining soup and bits from the pot into his bowl and cradled it, eating slowly.

When the weather wasn't cold, cold food didn't matter. But now that it was cold, cold rice and cold dishes were especially hard to swallow—one mouthful of hot noodle soup could warm the whole body right up.

After filling their bellies, Ye Yaodong added fresh water to the pot again, so they could drink something hot whenever thirsty.

Then he went back, tirelessly, to maintain a steady pace working across the sea.

One afternoon he hauled two trawls and both were toadfish. Then the longline brought up mostly black drum, plus a small portion of mixed catch.

Maybe it was because they hadn't moved—working this same patch of sea—and also because that fish really was swarming lately.

Though the fish were a bit cheaper, the quantity was pretty decent. After hauling in the very last longline hooks, the whole boat was covered in bamboo baskets.

Ten bamboo baskets held the longline cord; the other ten were all toadfish and black drum, with one basket of mixed fish. Father and son stacked cord on cord, fish on fish, so the boat wouldn't be crammed full.

When they were hauling in the line and sorting the catch just now, everything was spread out everywhere—there was barely room to set a foot. Only next to that oarfish by the gunwale was there still space to stand.

After tidying everything up, they immediately steered the boat toward the buoy of the gill net. The sun was already slanting west—they needed to pull the gill net in as fast as possible.

To catch bottom-dwelling fish in deep water, he'd set his gill net very deep—also because the roller wheel could help haul it in, saving effort.

He only had to lift the buoy, then tug the gill net and hook it onto the roller wheel, and the net came up smoothly along the roller. But the sea wind was a bit strong, and the loose net was blown all over the place—some of it snagged on the machine parts.

To get the net off quickly, Ye Yaodong had no choice but to snap the netting strands, straighten the net out, and only then could he continue.

He pulled the gill net to turn the roller wheel, and the gill net, with the wheel's turning, was drawn up bit by bit.

His father stood behind him, ready to collect the catch from the gill net as it came up.

Father and son divided the work—one hauled the net, the other gathered the catch. The gill net had barely gone one full turn on the roller when Ye Yaodong spotted a brightly colored red grouper on it below.

"Holy crap… a red grouper…"

Before he could finish marveling, he saw that the red grouper was tiny. With one tug of the net in his hand, the roller wheel spun the red grouper right up to him.

"Damn, palm-sized—what's the point?"

The fish was pricey, sure, but way too small. This one was probably only about three liang.

He watched the fish still flopping there, very much alive, hesitated a moment, then still called his father over to bring a hollow needle. He poked a hole in its belly, then tossed it back into the sea to release it.

So small it wouldn't fetch a price. If it were an ordinary small fish, catching it would be catching it—but a red grouper this small was a bit of a waste to bring up, better to release it.

This red grouper was a deep-sea fish. He'd just pierced a hole in its swim bladder to vent the air—otherwise even if released it wouldn't survive; its innards would burst and kill it.

Because deep-sea fish live their whole lives in the deep sea, where the water pressure is extremely high, they've long adapted to that deep-sea environment.

But when they're hauled up, the environment they're in is one they simply can't take—the high pressure inside their bodies will be out of balance with the outside air pressure.

If you don't vent the air in time, the fish will have all sorts of reactions from the pressure difference between inside and outside—eyes bulging and enlarging, the gall bladder protruding from the body, some fish even exploding on the spot.

Actually, using a needle to pierce the swim bladder is a method used to keep fish fresh.

Because boat technology wasn't developed at this time—going out to the open sea once might take three to five days to return—so venting deep-sea fish and keeping them on board, the half-dead fish could hold on for a few more days.

If you don't vent them, the fish will self-destruct and die shortly after being hauled up. Even if they don't explode, they'll die from not adapting to the water pressure on the boat.

Vent the fish right away, and they won't die so quickly.

Same principle applies to releasing them—if you toss a fish that's already adapted to the boat's air pressure straight into the sea, it'll die from being unable to adapt to the water pressure.

Poke a small hole in the fish, then toss it into the sea. The fish will feel some pain, sure, but that hole keeps the pressure inside and outside equal, letting it survive once returned to the sea.

Hairtail, for example, is a kind of deep-sea fish. After being brought ashore, their bodies undergo this same huge change—which is why the hairtail we see at the market often have bellies bursting out.

That's also why we never see live hairtail.

After releasing that tiny red grouper back into the sea, Ye Yaodong kept turning the roller wheel, only to see a whole string of toadfish come up, plus a bunch of tangled seaweed…

"Holy crap, this one's huge!"

Among that string of toadfish was one especially big one. All of them were stuck fast in the gill net, unable to move.

When the net reached his father's hands, Ye Yaodong went over to help too. Toadfish snared in a gill net are hard to escape and also very hard to pull free.

Because of the water pressure, all these toadfish hauled up had their mouths gaping open.

These toadfish gaped with huge ugly mouths—the biggest one looked to be over 20 Jin in weight.

After his father pulled it out, he admired it for a while. The few baskets from the trawl today were all just a few Jin in weight—he hadn't seen one this big.

After getting that whole string of toadfish off, Ye Yaodong kept pulling the net. With the roller wheel's help, the net came in fast—this was the easiest net he'd ever hauled.

He pulled up eight or nine toadfish in a row, the big ones seven or eight Jin, the small ones one or two, with two flatfish mixed in between. He was hauling the net and didn't have time to tell whether the flatfish were flounder or plaice.

From the net underwater, he could see the shadows of fish being drawn up. Ye Yaodong had just finished hauling in a 3-Jin flatfish when he craned his head to look at the sea surface.

He saw, tangled in the gill net, a brightly colored parrotfish of decent size—visually estimated at thirty to forty centimeters long.

"Holy crap… Dad, there's a parrotfish…"

"Oh? A parrotfish? I thought this gill net would only snag toadfish and flounder today."

Ye Fu glanced up, pleasantly surprised, but his hands didn't stop. In the net before him, a toadfish of about a jin was still caught inside, not yet pulled out.

Anyway, in a moment that parrotfish would also be pulled over to where he was.

"Probably set a bit deeper today."

The parrotfish gets its name from its bright colors and its mouth, which resembles a parrot's beak; it is also called "the parrot of the sea."

Ye Yaodong joyfully kept turning the spool, hauling the parrotfish up. As the parrotfish, tangled in the gill net, passed by his hand, he noticed something red in its mouth.

He paused in puzzlement, then reached in and pried it out, only to find it was a small piece of red coral, barely larger than the nail of a thumb.

The parrotfish is the world's strongest chewer; its teeth are made of fluorapatite, one of the toughest biominerals on earth. Every day it basically eats huge amounts of coral, then excretes white sand.

He wasn't at all surprised to pry a piece of red coral from its mouth.

Coral isn't worth much these days, even red coral. That little piece bitten off and stuck in its mouth could at most be used to grind a cabochon, or inlaid as an ornament on a bracelet, but it still counted as a free find, so he casually tucked it into his pocket.

Although it wasn't worth much, the color was bright and pretty, very festive too, and in the future it would be worth money—even such a tiny bit of red coral would fetch about a thousand yuan.

He could keep it to have a red coral ring inlaid for his wife; it would look pretty flashy when going out, and he'd heard wearing coral was good for the body.

He died young in his last life; in this one he had to live well. If he got the chance, he could take advantage of the cheap price and stockpile more—stacking them up at home just to look at would be fine.