Fresh in the Yellow Sea

Qingdao is a city favored by the sea, it is located in the north of China's coastline, on the south side of the Jiaodong Peninsula, east and south of the Pacific Ocean, adjacent to the Yellow Sea in the Pacific Ocean, with a total coastline of 817 kilometers, where the "Yellow Sea Warm Current" and "Coastal Current" meet, bringing abundant algae and plankton. The unique congenital conditions make the seafood produced here fresh and sweet, and there are many varieties.

The excellent natural resources have created a long history of fishery development in Qingdao. From fishing to deep-sea fish farming, from scattered to large-scale systems, from small fishing villages to metropolises, Qingdao has not only become the leader in the domestic seafood trading market, but also the vane of marine aquaculture in the mainland.

Try it first

On September 1, the fishing moratorium in the Yellow and Bohai Seas officially ended, and the wharf of Qingdao Fishing Port, which had been silent for four months, boiled again.

In Qingdao, the opening of the sea is as lively as a festival.

In order to eat "fresh stubble", just after lunch, Zhou Fenfang, who lives in Wanggezhuang Street, Laoshan District, couldn't wait to pull his wife to Gangdong Fishing Wharf.

At around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, with the sound of motors, the first batch of fishing boats operating offshore returned with a full load. After a while, crabs, gobies, conch, oysters, and clams...... A large wave of fresh and fatty seafood was piled up on the shore.

"Bring me two pounds of goby!" "I've got all the fish left!" Seeing the seafood landing, the citizens and vendors present opened the "rush to buy" mode, and some saw that the stall owners were too busy, so they simply started directly, for fear of being bought by others first. Zhou Fenfang, who is usually careful about budgeting, didn't care about bargaining at this time, squeezed into the crowd, weighed a few fat big crabs plus a big bag of eight-belt clams, gobies and oysters, and immediately paid.

On the way home, she and her wife planned for the seafood dinner in the evening. "This weekend, call the kids back for dinner. The crabs and gobies are steamed, the oysters and shrimp are boiled, and the eight clams are bought more, and a part of them is mixed cold, and the rest is eaten with dumplings, and the seafood that has just been beaten tastes fresh! ”

Qing Dynasty gourmand Yuan Mei regarded "fresh" as the original flavor in "Suiyuan Food List". Qingdao people also pursue "original taste" when eating seafood, which is what Zhou Fenfang called "fresh", which is a word coined by the older generation of Qingdao people, which is a kind of taste and visual experience that describes the original taste, which means that only local people can understand.

After the opening of the sea, Qingdao's major seafood market stalls also ushered in the sales season. Located in Liaoyang West Road, Shibei District, Buxi Market is the largest seafood market in Qingdao, and there is an endless stream of people who come here every day to grab "fresh". Approaching the Mid-Autumn Festival, the author is also going to buy some seafood here and send it to relatives and friends in other places to try it.

In front of the rows of stalls in the market, all kinds of seafood are fully studied, and the variety is dizzying. "Now there are big boats docking, and there are more types of seafood than in the previous two days, and the prices are much cheaper." The stall owners skillfully greet customers while quickly weighing the seafood. When the author carried more than a dozen catties of crabs and silver pomfret to the express station in the corner of the market, he happened to meet his neighbors, and everyone pulled up the family routine while walking, "It's a pity that it's not the time to eat mackerel, and the relatives of the mackerel prefer it."

In Qingdao, autumn mackerel is abundant and cheap, but because of the quality of the meat, there are few buyers, and the expensive spring mackerel is the "guest of honor" at every table. After a whole winter of growth, spring mackerel is larger than autumn mackerel, and the meat is firmer and more fragrant.

Due to the popularity of spring mackerel in Qingdao, it has also derived a unique local custom "mackerel ceremony" - "spring arrives, mackerel jumps, and the father-in-law laughs", which is said that the uncle will bring a large mackerel with plump flesh to the old man after the spring mackerel is listed in large quantities during the rainy season in April. Although this custom talks about filial piety, it also highlights the unique "beauty of fresh fish" of Qingdao mackerel.

Nowadays, Qingdao's mackerel is no longer an ordinary sea fish, it "jumps" out of the sea, "jumps" into the big market, and becomes a rich fish. With the help of developed e-commerce platforms and cold chain logistics, Qingdao mackerel is sold to more than 300 cities in more than 20 provinces, and the sales volume of mackerel in the Shazikou area of Laoshan District in April and May alone has reached more than 9 million, driving local fishermen to generate income of up to 2 billion yuan.

Eat the sea

On the opening day, it is the fishermen who are more excited than the diners.

"Today's harvest is good, and the gobby alone caught more than 100 catties." Cheng Guangzhou, a fisherman, said with a smile that when the boat came back, in addition to the goby, there were some crabs and miscellaneous fish, and after a rough calculation, the income was quite considerable.

Like Cheng Guangzhou, the faces of the fishermen who returned with a full load were filled with the joy of a good harvest. In fact, the fishermen have "again" experienced the days of the great harvest in recent years.

In the early 90s of the last century, "big mackerel chasing and biting the buttocks" was a true portrayal of Qingdao's rich marine fishery resources. Cheng Guangzhou learned to go to the sea to fish before he was 19 years old, and he still remembers the prosperity of that year, "At that time, it was enough to use a small boat for fishing, and there was no need to go out to sea at all, and the fishermen's life was very moist."

However, due to pollution, intensive fishing, and other reasons, local marine fishery resources continue to decline. There are also fishing vessels that use the "cut off" type of fishing, especially bottom trawling, in which the size of the mesh is decreasing year by year, the proportion of bycatch juveniles is increasing, and even the net is equipped with equipment like a plow or knife to plow back and forth on the seabed. This fishing method makes it difficult for the seedlings to grow up inshore, and the regenerative function and sustainable development of marine fishery resources have been seriously damaged.

In order to protect fishery resources and promote the sustainable development of fisheries, Qingdao implemented a fishing moratorium system in 1995.

As for the fishing moratorium, many fishermen initially did not support and did not cooperate. "For fishermen, the moratorium is tantamount to 'unemployment.'" Cheng Guangzhou said, "At that time, there were a lot of people who committed crimes against the wind and secretly went out to sea to fish. ”

"Later, the strict arrest gradually decreased, after all, poaching is illegal, but you have to eat lawsuits." Cheng Guangzhou looked back at the piles of fish and said, "Fortunately, the government has strictly grasped it, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to enjoy the dividends now." According to the news, since 2014, the resources of hairtail, silver pomfret, three-wart pike crab, squid, Chinese prawn and other resources in the Yellow Sea have increased a lot, and we obviously feel that the quantity and quality of fish caught in recent years have increased a lot. ”

In addition to strictly cracking down on illegal fishing, the Qingdao fishery administration department also takes into account "tenderness". "In order to let us rest assured that we will suspend fishing, starting in 2022, the government will also give us 'fishing moratorium red envelopes', and I have received more than 10,000 yuan this year." Speaking of this, Gao Liming, a fisherman born in the 80s, felt beautiful in his heart, "This money is just used to repair fishing boats."

In recent years, fishermen have also felt that there are fewer peers. This is because under the guidance of government policies and the help of subsidies, many fishermen have found a new way to "eat the sea".

Li Jianping, 51, was one of the first fishermen to try to transform. Five or six years ago, he held a fisherman's banquet at the Shazikou fishing port wharf, and the year before last, he upgraded the fisherman's banquet into a boutique homestay, "now I earn no less than when I fish, and when I am free, I also go to sea, but the amount is not large, mainly to catch some fish, shrimp, crabs and shellfish for the tourists in the homestay to taste."

Li Jianping has a WeChat group of more than 300 people on his mobile phone. "They are all guests who have come to our homestay, Qingdao's seafood is of good quality and affordable, these people in the group often ask me to help send seafood, and yesterday there were guests who asked me to help send pike crabs to Xi'an." Relying on the homestay, Li Jianping opened a new business of purchasing seafood.

Animal husbandry and fishing

According to the habit, every fishing moratorium, Qingdao people will eat some frozen small mackerel and small trash fish to satisfy their hunger. However, in recent years, a large number of fresh large yellow croaker, treasure fish, salmon, manta ray, etc. have appeared in the Qingdao seafood market, which makes people have the illusion that they have not "suspended fishing".

Behind the fresh sea fish, there is countless sweat and wisdom.

Tucked away in the mountains and seas of eastern Laoshan is a tranquil bay where Chen Gang, a large farmer, is the "secret base".

Locals buy sea areas to build a pond to make quick money from farming, but Chen Gang's approach is to only throw stones into the sea for several years in a row.

Chen Gang has his own plans. "Throwing stones into the sea is the first step in creating a marine ranch." With the precipitation of time, a thick layer of floating mud appears on the surface of the stone, and when it reaches a certain thickness, it will attract various marine life to gather, and when the time is ripe, the stone sea will grow into a healthy and lively "underwater forest".

In the past few years, offshore aquaculture has led to increased pollution in the sea area, and the quality of aquaculture products has declined year by year, and marine ranching has become the general trend. Chen Gang clicked on a video he just shot: at a depth of five or six meters above the sea surface, there is a lively underwater world, where seaweed of different lengths from a few centimeters to several meters creates a seaweed forest, where all kinds of fish, shrimp, crabs and unnamed marine creatures shuttle back and forth; Sea cucumbers and abalone are very pleasant in the piles of stones covered with seaweed, and if you look closely, some abalone shells also have different numbers of "ID cards" hanging on their shells......

"The growth of the 'underwater forest' can effectively restore the seabed ecology, and the seafood produced has wild quality, and with the significant increase in production, the price will naturally be advantageous." Chen Gang said, "This is called 'sharpening the knife and not cutting wood', you see, from our sea casually caught up an abalone weighs half a catty, 4 sea cucumbers reach 1 catty, the taste and nutrition are not inferior to deep-sea fishing, the price is higher than the traditional aquaculture products." ”

As the first city in mainland China to put forward the concept of "marine ranching", Qingdao is also the first city in mainland China to promote the large-scale development of "marine ranching". In addition to offshore aquaculture, Qingdao continues to attack the deep sea.

"It is my dream to raise salmon on a large scale in the sea." As early as 2012, Dong Shuanglin, a professor at Ocean University of China, proposed the idea of deep-sea salmon farming, but did not have the specific implementation conditions until 2014, when Li Hong, who has been engaged in hydraulic construction for many years, joined the team, and the curtain of deep-sea aquaculture was finally opened.

"Salmon is a migratory fish that needs to be hatched in fresh water, cultivated, domesticated in seawater, and then grown in the sea." Li Hong invested in the construction of a land-based seedling cultivation base in 2015, and Dong Shuanglin quickly set up a team of experts and began to jointly implement the "enterprise + farmer" breeding model of the (Yimeng) Mountain (Yellow) Sea Relay.

As things got better, an unprecedented challenge struck: the triangular high-density polyethylene (HDPE) cages used for the trials were damaged by shark bites, resulting in a significant loss of fry.

What to do? The team was at a loss, and the Haixi Bay Marine Industry Base located in the West Coast New Area of Qingdao brought good news: the double-layer net-coated full-submersible cage can dive to the bottom of the sea in summer and the middle layer of the sea in winter, so that salmon can grow in a suitable water temperature in different seasons, and the cage can effectively prevent shark bites.

In May 2018, the world's first large-scale full-submersible deep-sea fishery aquaculture equipment independently developed by the mainland - "Shenlan No. 1" was completed and delivered. In June 2021, Shenlan No. 1 successfully harvested 150,000 rainbow trout, with an average weight of more than 4 kg per fish, marking the first large-scale salmon farming in the deep sea on the mainland.

Facing the endless sea, Chen Gang said the next step: to build a seafood deep processing production line, without adding any preservatives to maintain the freshness of seafood for a long time, so that more inland diners can enjoy the Yellow Sea.

Thousands of blue waves, can also be cultivated.

In the endless sea area of Qingdao, there are clams in spring, oysters in winter, and sea fish are constantly in gear all year round. The abundant sea has given birth to thousands of fresh and delicious foods, and on Qingdao's winding coastline, the story of eating the sea by the sea is continuing to write a new chapter.

(Source: Economic Daily)