From catching the sea to breeding, it is a history of condensed Chinese seafood

In recent years, wild large yellow croaker has entered the public opinion circle with a "sky-high price fish" of several thousand yuan/catty, and the market price of pure cultured large yellow croaker is about 15 yuan/catty. is also a big yellow croaker, why is the price so good?

"As soon as the yellow croaker is on, there are 10,000 taels of gold. "Wild yellow croaker is a traditional noodle dish and mouth color dish in Shanghai, Zhejiang. Perhaps no fish on China's coastline has had a more tumultuous fate than the giant yellow croaker.

In October this year, I witnessed a night fishing of large yellow croaker in Ningde, Fujian Province.

●The large yellow croaker is silvery-white during the day and golden at night. The picture shows semi-cultured yellow croaker, commonly known as "half melon" in Ningde.

The night catch is to cater to the market's preference for large yellow croaker with a golden body. The large yellow croaker is golden yellow because of the golden skin glands, but it is very easy to be decomposed and faded by ultraviolet rays, so the same yellow croaker is caught at night and during the day, and it is completely two prices.

At seven or eight o'clock, when it was about to get dark, the skilled sorting workers invited by the farmers in the village were already in place, and the supervisors of the major channels also arrived at the boat at the same time to determine the situation of the large yellow croaker in their own offshore fishing rows.

The fisherman scooped up the net of the cage from the water, and the golden yellow croaker in the frame revealed its true face, and the water surface croaked. A huge ice water tank has been prepared next to the cage, and after catching the large yellow croaker with a net bag, it must be quickly poured into the ice water tank and covered with a blackout red cloth.

The large yellow croaker remains golden, faints in the ice water for less than 10 minutes, enters a semi-dead state, and then enters the sorting and packing process, followed by the flow of weighing, sorting, adding ice and packing until 12 o'clock in the morning. These yellow croakers will flow to the major sales channels, and in a few days, these large yellow croakers will be served to the tables of major restaurants in the city.

●Most of the sorting workers are young women, and the salary of this irregular sorting job is about 400 yuan per night.

The large yellow croaker will make a croaking sound. Pure breeding of large yellow croaker, commonly known as "vegetable melon" in Ningde, the market price is about 15 yuan / catty. Today's catch is a new face of the yellow croaker world: semi-wild large yellow croaker, commonly known as half melon, the price is about 3-4 times that of the same size vegetable melon.

In recent years, wild large yellow croaker has entered the public opinion circle with a "sky-high price fish" of several thousand yuan per catty, which is in stark contrast to "vegetable melon" and "half melon".

The same big yellow croaker, why is the price so good? The story has to start from more than 50 years ago.

1

"Extinction fishing": from cabbage prices to sky-high prices

In the coastal areas of Fujian and Zhejiang in the 1970s, there were many wild yellow croakers and abundant supply, and the retail price was as low as 0.1 yuan per catty at the cheapest time, while the prices of cabbage and pork in the same period were 0.08 yuan and 0.6 yuan per catty respectively, which was really a veritable "cabbage price".

The situation of the price of wild large yellow croaker selling cabbage is inseparable from the large-scale promotion of the special fishing method "knocking out".

Knocking on the bamboo, also referred to as knocking bamboo poles, can be traced back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. Knock on the method of fishing, that is, two mother boats and dozens of small boats, in a circle, constantly knock on the bamboo board tied to the boat, narrow the encirclement to a certain distance, and then increase the percussion force, after stuning the yellow croaker, and then pick it up together.

●The large yellow croaker is a totoaba family, and there are two special otoliths in the skull of the yellow croaker, which will resonate abnormally when heard and cause concussion, fainting and death.

After this low-cost and high-efficiency fishing method was learned by the people of Zhejiang, the local yellow croaker production increased significantly. At its peak, in 1974, Zhejiang Province organized several large-scale fishing of large yellow croaker in the open sea wintering grounds, and the output of large yellow croaker in the East China Sea alone reached 190,000 tons.

The knocking method ensures a cheap and sufficient supply of large yellow croaker, but it pays a heavy price for "extinction fishing": in the sea areas where the knocking method is used, all the yellow croakers of all sizes faint, regardless of size, and the wild large yellow croaker resources begin to experience a cliff-like depletion. Under the strong fishing pressure, the actual output of large yellow croaker in the country in 1988 was less than 20,000 tons, and it has been difficult to form a fishing flood since 1990.

In the memory of the older generation of Shanghainese, the big yellow croaker is a dish to please the mouth, and it is a must-have for eating. The large yellow croaker must be large, in the era of abundant large yellow croaker resources, a large yellow croaker of three or five catties is very common. However, in the 90s, wild yellow croaker disappeared from the dining table of Shanghainese for many years.

Scarcity is expensive. Wild yellow croaker, which used to be as cheap as cabbage, is often sold at a high price of several thousand yuan per catty in recent years.

In January 2022, a fishing boat in Xiangshan, Zhejiang Province caught nearly 4,000 catties of wild large yellow croaker in one net, and sold a total of 9.57 million yuan, equivalent to more than 2,000 yuan per catty. Also in the winter of 2023, fishermen in a mountain village in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, caught a wild yellow croaker 67 cm long and weighing 4.8 catties around the central mountain island of Ninghai Bay in Xiangshan Port, and sold it for 26,600 yuan.

●The sea fishing for large yellow croaker in various live videos has also earned enough popularity. But these are likely to be fished out of the cage and turned around to go out to sea in a small boat, pretending to be fishing.

On the one hand, there is a scarce and sky-high price of wild large yellow croaker, and on the other hand, there is a huge market demand that has lasted for decades, and the aquaculture industry has been born in response to the times.

2

From "begging for the sea" to farming

Large yellow croaker dies when it comes out of the water, and it was once considered impossible to farm. Driven by market demand, the technical problems of breeding large yellow croaker have long been overcome.

Today, large yellow croaker is the largest farmed marine fish species in China. According to 2022 data, Ningde large yellow croaker contributes 96% of China's total large yellow croaker production, and production has tripled in ten years.

The traditional "cage culture" is the most mainstream breeding method of large yellow croaker.

At the earliest, most of the farmers used small floating cages, which had simple structure, low cost and low breeding threshold. However, this kind of cage equipment is backward, the ability to resist wind and waves is poor, and it can only be produced in the shallow bay offshore, and the overload and high-density layout of the cage bring a series of environmental consequences: the water flow is not smooth, the bait sinks to the bottom pollutes the water quality, and greatly exceeds the ecological carrying capacity of the sea area, which aggravates the risk of red tide and seriously affects the ecological balance of the sea area.

After the implementation of the ban on culture in some coastal areas, the area of ordinary cage culture is gradually decreasing. Nowadays, the more mainstream is through-frame cage culture.

Through-frame cages are more resistant to wind and waves, and can reach shallow sea locations farther than floating cages.

The cages are connected together to form a fishing row, which is very stable to walk and can also live in, and the fishermen's daily breeding and life are here. Ningde fishermen usually have a place to live on the shore, so they figuratively refer to going to sea as "going to the bottom".

●Upper left: traditional wooden fishing rafts, upper right: plastic fishing rafts, bottom picture: floating large cages.

It can be said that the farmed large yellow croaker industry in the past two decades has filled a huge gap in market supply. However, there is a huge gap between the taste of the farmed large yellow croaker marketed in the market today and the wild large yellow croaker in the past.

People who have eaten wild large yellow croaker can basically distinguish this taste difference: wild large yellow croaker is delicate, fragrant and odorless, low in fat, and the meat forms a natural garlic clove. Farmed large yellow croaker exudes earthy smell and peculiar smell, round body, fatty, loose meat, and strong artificial feeling.

Correspondingly, the difference in taste is also reflected in the price. Traditional diners who love large yellow croaker have many negative dissatisfaction with farmed large yellow croaker, and even more respect the myth of wild large yellow croaker, and the price of wild yellow croaker has been further consolidated. In Ningde, a large yellow croaker breeding city, the price difference between a 1 kg wild large yellow croaker and farmed large yellow croaker is as high as more than 20 times.

In the huge price space, "semi-wild large yellow croaker" should be born at the right time.

3

From farmed to "semi-wild"

In the early days, the purpose of large yellow croaker farming was simple and crude: to safely raise yellow croaker and efficiently grow the flesh of the fish. It takes two years for a wild yellow croaker to grow to 400 grams, while farmed large yellow croaker can be marketed in as little as half a year. This used to be exciting news and meant there was hope for the industry.

The new proposition of contemporary yellow croaker farmers is how to raise yellow croaker well, increase added value, prevent rotten prices, and make farmed yellow croaker closer to the wild as much as possible.

In order to raise large yellow croaker with better taste and higher added value, it is necessary to let the large yellow croaker "eat less and exercise more" in a water quality environment closer to the wild.

●The pole fence of Ningde semi-wild large yellow croaker breeding base is like a huge football field of large yellow croaker, and the maximum depth of the purse se net can reach more than 20 meters.

The person in charge of the "wild" large yellow croaker breeding base in Ningde told me that in order to ensure the taste of the large yellow croaker, they tried to simulate the growth state of yellow croaker under natural conditions - low density, less feeding, high exercise, large water volume, and strong water flow. This also means more refined management: in order to comply with the growth pattern of yellow croaker, it is not fed when the temperature drops, and the fish are fed more when the sea flow rate increases during high tides, and the fish will be more active.

Therefore, unlike the extensive breeding of large yellow croaker, this semi-wild large yellow croaker grows more slowly, and the breeding time of a 1.5 kg semi-wild large yellow croaker takes 4 years.

●In addition to cages and deep-sea cages, in recent years, a new purse seine culture method has been introduced, which is mainly used in Fujian Province. The purse seine culture model largely restores the wild environment, with a maximum depth of more than 20 meters. According to the "Quality Evaluation and Grade Judgment of Large Yellow Croaker with Different Breeding Modes and Circulation Methods", the data of purse seine fish are closest to the wild.

The quality of semi-wild large yellow croaker raised by purse seine and deep-water cage culture is indeed better, and the return is rich, but the risk is greater and the breeding cost is higher. Small producers are largely unable to enter, and more can only join the production of large groups through cooperation.

If there is only 1 acre of land on land can still be intensively cultivated, then marine aquaculture is definitely a big project to compete for strength and resources, resources are more concentrated, the head effect is obvious, and it is difficult for small producers to get a piece of the pie.

●Semi-wild (wild) yellow croaker has the characteristics of wild yellow croaker, which also enables good chefs to exert more skills, highlight the quality of yellow croaker, form a new generation of yellow croaker's signature dish, and positively establish the market recognition of wild yellow croaker.

In addition to the difficulty of small producers to enter the game, another question about the "semi-wild" large yellow croaker is: wild is wild, breeding is breeding, how can there be an intermediate state?

"Semi-wild" is just a market term for yellow croaker in the intermediate state of pure culture and pure wild, and there is no actual production standard, which may be optimized from traditional cages, or it may be carefully cultured in purse seine or deep-water cages. At present, the market still lacks a more refined grading and traceability system for large yellow croaker farming.

4

Kill the goose that lays the golden egg

Looking back on the past 50 years, the giant yellow croaker has gone through the past 50 years: human beings have taken it from the ocean, and once they have fished with all their might; after overcoming the difficulties in breeding, the large yellow croaker is close to flooding; and now it has entered the road of "wild farming" that is infinitely close to "wild". The fishermen who live on the large yellow croaker by the sea have also changed from a life of begging for food from the sky to a modern aquaculture in cooperation with the ocean.

After going around and around, the value anchor of the big yellow croaker seems to have never changed, that is, "wild".

I've eaten wild yellow croaker, and the delicate and pure taste is vaguely "natural flavor". I often complain about the fishiness and unappetizing nature of farmed fish, but I have an insight into the source of these fishy smells, and I have studied various farming methods of large yellow croaker, so I cherish the wild fish and seafood that I can still eat today.

What is touching is that after the era of extensive resource grabbing, modern people can only use higher and higher inputs and costs to try to get close to the "natural flavor".

If you know today, why bother in the first place?

〇 References: [1] "Big Yellow Croaker Breeding", Fujian Provincial Department of Science and Technology, 2004 ・Beijing [2] "Large Yellow Croaker Quality Evaluation and Grade Judgment of Different Breeding Modes and Circulation Methods", 2022, Shi Yuzhuo [3] "Preliminary Study on the Relationship between Nutrition and the Quality of Farmed Large Yellow Croaker", Ma Rui, 2014 [4] "Nearly 1.6 Billion Large Yellow Croaker Fry Dumped into the Sea in 8 Days!Can More than 140 Nursery Farms Spontaneously Sign Release Agreements, Can the Bad Market Be Reversed?", National Fisheries, 2019

-This is the 563rd original article of the Food News Agency-

Foodie

author

苇杭

An independent writer who walks the fields and kitchens, observing and participating in the changes in contemporary diets.

The picture comes from the author and the Internet

Editor: Zenn

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