Chapter 303: Sky-high Price
Giant clam?!
Liang Ziqiang was shocked. How could he not know about this thing? It was so well-known!
However, it was not this era that made it so famous, but later! It was almost after the millennium that ordinary giant clam shells gradually entered the decoration world. Later, they became very popular and hard to find, which happened after 2010. Finally, giant clams became less and less, extremely rare, and were directly banned from buying and selling.
But in the 1980s, the situation was very different.
These days, the resources of common giant clam shells in the ocean are still relatively abundant. Fishermen sometimes catch giant clam shells and discard them on the shore, or crush them and use them as lime...
So Liang Ziqiang was very confused. Did people regard giant clam shells as treasures these days? To the point where people deliberately blasted reefs to look for giant clams?
"You mean, they are collecting giant clam meat?" Liang Ziqiang asked tentatively.
"That's right and wrong. To be more precise, the adductor muscle of the giant clam is the most valuable!" Qiu Dongzhi corrected.
Sure enough, Liang Ziqiang had guessed correctly.
As far as he knows, ordinary giant clam shells from the 1980s were not valuable, but in the 1970s and 1980s, some Southeast Asian countries, as well as Taiwan and Hong Kong islands in China, were extremely sought after for the adductor muscles of live giant clams.
In fact, in the 1970s and 1980s, a lot of giant clam muscles from the South China Sea were made into dried scallops, and a considerable portion of them were exported to Singapore and other places.
Now the meat is expensive and the shell is cheap, but in later times the shell will be more expensive than the meat. The two eras are completely opposite to each other.
While I was thinking about it, I heard Lao Qiu speak again:
"You may not know that as long as someone can get the adductor muscle of the giant clam, merchants will rush to buy it. Now it is sold for one hundred yuan per pound! It is not an exaggeration to say that it is as valuable as gold. Now you know why they are running around in the sea and blowing up so many reefs, right?"
Hearing this, Liang Ziqiang's heart was filled with waves.
Although he knew that the adductor muscle of giant clams was in great demand these days, he didn't expect it to be so popular!
What does one hundred yuan per pound mean? This was in 1984, not later times!
In 1984, top-quality seafood such as grouper and three-clawed croaker were only sold for over 20 yuan. A few hundred or even a thousand yuan was a thing of the 21st century.
The adductor muscle of giant clam can be sold for one hundred yuan per pound in this era!
Now he finally understood why the majestic grouper was just a cover for giant clams in the eyes of reef bombers.
Giant clams have a characteristic that they usually live at the bottom of shallow sea reefs. If you want to collect giant clams, you will often be blocked by the reefs above, which is very inconvenient.
It is extremely difficult for ordinary fishermen to collect giant clams. However, blasting reefs is a crude but effective way to collect giant clams on the bottom of the reef.
But this is not the biggest difficulty. The greater difficulty is that there are many reefs on the sea, and it is difficult to judge where there are giant clams under the reefs and where there are none! Finding giant clams is even more difficult than finding groupers. This is probably why fishermen in nearby fishing villages rarely go to the trouble of picking valuable giant clam meat.
The two people who were blasting the reefs did not accurately find groupers, but they accurately found giant clams one after another.
Anyway, Liang Ziqiang asked himself that he definitely did not have the ability to tell which reefs had giant clams and which did not.
I don't know where those two people who blew up the reef came from, but they were able to perform such a skill.
"I underestimated the abilities of those two!" Liang Ziqiang sighed.
"It is indeed a skill to be able to find giant clams, but it is a pity that they are too greedy and do not use their skills correctly. Blowing up the reef is too cruel to destroy the family line, so today I wanted to persuade them to try the method of slowly digging, but I didn't expect them to not only not listen, but also become more evil. It is not good for young people to behave and act like this!"
Qiu Dongzhi shook his head and sighed as if he was commenting on something unrelated to him, but his tone was not particularly angry.
We chatted all the way until we arrived at Driftwood Island.
After parking Lao Qiu's boat, Lao Qiu insisted on taking them to sit in the house on the island. Liang Ziqiang politely declined as it was getting late.
Old Qiu gave them ten dollars each, and also specifically stated:
"This money has nothing to do with rescuing me from the sea. We'll talk about that later. This ten dollars is compensation for the time you wasted in helping tow my boat back!"
Liang Ziqiang and his friends declined a few times, but seeing that Old Qiu was very serious, they thought that if they didn't accept the money, they would have to sleep on the island tonight. So they all accepted the money and sailed back to the village.
"You said that Old Qiu is very generous! He must be quite rich. Is raising oysters and abalone so profitable now?" On the way, holding the big unity that Old Qiu had just given him, Deng Zhaocai muttered:
"How about I stop going out to sea one day and find a place to grow oysters and abalone?"
"You have to have a boat first!" Li Liang woke him up the next second.
He has always been burdened by his family, and he spends all his money as he can, and he has even started to dream of opening an oyster farm.
"In my opinion, Old Qiu is not necessarily rich, but his personality is the main reason. He remembers both kindness and grudges. Didn't we save him? He wants to thank us no matter if we have money or not!" Liang's father continued, "I see that the scale of his oyster farm and abalone farm is not particularly large, and raising oysters and abalone is not that profitable!"
Liang Ziqiang listened and had similar thoughts in his mind. Oysters are not expensive these days, and it is still difficult to make a fortune by raising a few oysters. Of course, raising abalone is relatively better, but abalone is also particularly fat four-headed and three-headed abalone. The small abalones that are usually raised are not worth the price.
But just now, just for their help in pulling the boat, Lao Qiu gave them ten yuan each, which is eighty yuan for eight people. In this day and age, it is no exaggeration to call it generous and lavish.
Maybe my father was right, and Mr. Qiu gave more just out of gratitude.
"You said that Old Xie was driving the boat in a hurry to chase those two fish frying men. It has been a while now. I don't know if he can catch up with them?" Lin Baixian was curious about this question and asked speculatively.
"It's probably over!" Liang's father shook his head. "That frying boat might be faster than him. How can we chase it? It has already run away!"
"What if he catches up? Old Xie, at his age, can really fight against two young guys? I would rather he doesn't catch up. If he really catches up, Old Xie will probably suffer!" Zhu Tianpeng had a completely different idea.
After returning to the village shore, he immediately rushed to the purchasing point to sell the fish.
Today, Liang Ziqiang and his friends caught a total of three kinds of fish: hair shrimp, bamboo saury, and snapper.
The hair shrimp and saury are not intended to be sold, but to be kept at home and used as bait for longline fishing.
Various types of snappers were sorted into categories and brought out to Zheng Liu.
This time, Liang Ziqiang sold all his red snappers, four-line snappers, and purple snappers for more than two hundred and twenty yuan, which was not much different from the last time, just slightly less.
My father's boat caught quite a few snappers, and after selling them all, he made around two hundred dollars.
After walking out of the purchasing point with the money, Liang's father immediately split it with Liang Tiancheng, giving them about 100 yuan each.
As they walked back, Liang's father was still muttering, "From what Old Qiu said, he wanted to find a way to reward Ah Qiang handsomely for saving him from the water. I don't know if this is true or not. If it is, Ah Qiang will be rich soon!"
"It's up to him!" Liang Ziqiang laughed.
To be honest, he rushed over to rescue people because he thought that since he had met them, he should try to save them if he could. Besides, he recognized that the boat was Lao Xie's, so it was somewhat of a fate.
As for the rest, I didn’t think much about it because I was in a hurry at that time.
Of course, if Old Qiu was so serious and insisted on rewarding him handsomely, he would still be happy to accept it...
(End of this chapter)
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