"Oh no!"
"Wang Defa!"
Robert and Tom's voices rang out one after another. Fu Wan looked up at the sky speechlessly. The commotion from these two had even scared away the crabs.
"Brother, you should go and help them!"
Fu Wan turned to Fu Ming and Fu Liang and said that Jack was a bit more clever than them, and even though he was excited, he followed Fu Wan's lead.
"Wan, are there really crabs here?"
Jack picked up his flashlight and swept it around, but his excitement instantly cooled when he saw a patch of bare mud.
He couldn't help but question his existence. Fu Wan gestured for him to follow, and they stopped in front of a mud puddle, following the tracks left by crabs on the ground.
"Jack, I'll show you a magic trick. Do you believe me? There's a crab here."
"Really? Where?"
Jack stepped forward with some skepticism, but after looking around for a while, all he could see was mud.
Fu Wan reached into the mud beside her leg and dug, when suddenly a dark shadow darted out.
The shadowy figure was faster than Fu Wan; she pressed down on the crab with one hand and then grabbed it with both hands.
It was a half-pound blue crab, waving its large pincers at Fu Wan and her companion.
"Wow, that's amazing!"
Jack's eyes were full of admiration. "Wan, are there any secret techniques for catching crabs in Chinese Kung Fu?"
"This... there should be!"
Fu Wan suppressed a laugh and nodded haphazardly. It's true that very few people in the US eat crabs like this, so naturally they're not good at catching them.
"Wan, how did you know the crabs were hiding in the mud?"
"Look at the lines on the ground. These are the tracks left by crabs. If you find the direction of the lines, you can find where the crabs are hiding."
Seeing Jack's eagerness to learn, Fu Wan didn't hold back and simply explained the secrets of catching crabs to him.
Jack was clever; after two or three attempts, he successfully caught a stone crab all by himself.
This made him incredibly proud, and he grabbed the crab and kept showing it off to Robert and Tom.
Robert and his companion finally managed to pull their legs out of the mud, and when they turned around, they saw that Jack had already caught a crab.
The two were immediately indignant and joined the crab-catching team.
Seeing that they were having a great time, Fu Wan didn't stay idle either. She walked closer to the sea, wanting to see if there was anything else she could find.
Since we're already here, we can't just take a few crabs home.
Fu Ming and Fu Liang shared the same idea. While Jack and the other two were still digging in the mud, the two of them had already started looking for fish on the mudflats.
"Wow, is this an octopus too?"
Fu Ming exclaimed in surprise, and when he pulled his hand out of the mud, he was surprised to find that he was holding something that looked like an octopus.
"Hey, look! What a strange octopus!"
Fu Wan turned her head upon hearing the sound and saw that Fu Ming was indeed holding an octopus. However, unlike ordinary octopuses, this octopus was colored like the stripes on a lionfish, making it look extremely dangerous.
"Why is it this color? Maybe we should just throw it away; it might be poisonous!"
Fu Liang looked serious; he hadn't forgotten what Fu Wan had told him: he shouldn't touch these strangely shaped seafood.
"Ah Wan, is this thing poisonous?"
Upon hearing this, Fu Ming was about to throw it away when he saw Fu Wan walking over covered in mud, so he quickly asked her again.
Fu Wan carefully examined the octopus and only drew a conclusion when she noticed the obvious bulge on its head.
"It looks like a mimic octopus. Don't worry, it's not poisonous. It just changes to a different poisonous color when it's in danger to scare away enemies."
"A mimicry octopus? And it can change color?"
Fu Ming was extremely surprised; he had never seen such a strange octopus in his entire life!
Fu Wan nodded, "The normal body color of the mimic octopus is a spotted brown. They have tens of thousands of color sacs on their bodies, which can change the color and shape of their bodies according to the environment."
Look at its color now, isn't it similar to a lionfish? And its shape, when it twists, it looks like a sea snake."
Image of a mimicking octopus (removed if infringing copyright).
Fu Ming nodded repeatedly upon hearing this. At that moment, the mimicry octopus was indeed wrapped around his hand like a sea snake, and even through the gloves, he got goosebumps all over his body.
"If I put it next to seaweed, will the octopus turn green?"
Fu Ming suddenly had a whimsical idea, but Fu Wan shook her head. She had only seen a mimicry octopus once in her previous life, and she hadn't even had a chance to see it change color.
After Fu Ming finished speaking, he put his hand into the seawater next to him. Everyone was wondering if it would change color, but unexpectedly, the mimic octopus stretched out its body in the water, and then its eight tentacles pushed off forcefully, instantly disappearing into the seawater.
"Holy crap, the octopus got away!"
Fu Ming chased after it with the tongs, just as a wave crashed over and the octopus completely disappeared.
"Oh dear, what a pity! I wanted to catch it and show it to Lingling and the others!"
Fu Ming was filled with regret; he hadn't planned to eat it anyway.
"It's okay, we'll definitely meet again next time."
To be honest, Fu Wan didn't expect there to be mimicking octopuses near Fu Family Village. Such creatures should have only been discovered in 1998.
Robert, Jack, and the other two didn't realize that Fu Ming had caught a color-changing octopus until the mimicry octopus escaped.
All three felt it was a pity, so they waded into the sea to see if they could catch the escaped octopus.
Perhaps because they were using a mimicking octopus as bait, everyone was searching intently in the shallow water. They caught all sorts of things, including octopuses and crabs.
As the tide receded, many reefs were revealed.
After not seeing any seafood in the water, Fu Wan turned her attention to the large reefs.
There will definitely be seafood on the rocks when the tide goes out.
Sure enough, after feeling around for only two stones, Fu Wan spotted the abalone.
Although it's not a two-headed abalone, it's about the size of a duck egg and looks like it has about three heads.
Fu Wan drew her short knife and began to pry open the abalone with the back of the blade.
Braised pork with abalone, braised chicken with abalone—just thinking about it makes her hungry.
Besides abalone, there were also many red snails, bulleye snails, and scallops, as well as plenty of mussels. But what Fu Wan was most interested in were the ribbonfish and clams that had been partially exposed in the mud.
Dig, dig, dig, I have to bring all of these home.
It wasn't until the first rays of the rising sun appeared on the sea that Fu Wan realized it was already daylight.
She straightened up and rubbed her aching back. Oh dear, beachcombing is really dangerous; a few hours can easily slip by without you noticing.
"It's about time to head back. How was your haul?"
"Not bad! There are quite a few crab tentacles, it's just a pity I didn't see the one that changes color."
Fu Ming looked regretful. His bucket and bamboo basket contained four or five catties of stone crabs and red-armored crabs, two or three catties of octopus, two palm-sized sea cucumbers, and four or five sea urchins.
Fu Liang's harvest was similar, except that he also caught a few pounds of three-spot crabs and two or three pounds of mantis shrimp.
Jack and his friends also caught quite a few crabs. They caught more than ten blue crabs under the rocks and in the mud, and half of them weighed more than seven or eight ounces.
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