Galactic Garbage Station

Chapter 31 Anglerfish

“This fish is so ugly.” Su Liang and Su Xiaolin also saw the strange fish.

“Pull up a bit and let’s take a closer look.” Su Jing said and three of them pulled the net cage up from three corners and the entire weird fish came out of the water.

It looks very ugly, like a monster, its skin is smooth with no scales, the front half of the body flat disc-shaped, tail cylindrical, two eyes on the top of the head, a pelvic mouth as wide as the body, mouth edge with a row of sharp teeth pointed inward, chest has a pair of very wide fins, like arms.

“This is an anglerfish.” Su Jing recognized it.

“Anglerfish grew up like this.” Su Liang and Su Xiaolin have heard of anglerfish, but they never saw it with their eyes. This kind of fish is rare, even when they were born on the beach, they have never caught it, so they don’t know anything about it.

“Don’t look at it like this, its weight more than 20 jin(about 10 kg).” Su Jing smiled and smiled.

“So much? 20 Jin? It will probably sell for 3000 or 4000 yuan?” Su Liang and Su Xiaolin are very excited.

“This is still a conservative estimate, a live one may even fetch a higher price,” Su Jing said.

Anglerfish, commonly known as stutter fish, squid, sea bream, Pipa fish, etc., is a medium-sized benthic fish, generally living in the depths of 200-500 meters below sea level, carnivorous, with the fins on the top of the head as bait. The thorns on the front of the dorsal fins are like the shape of a fishing rod. The front end has skin folds that stick out and look like bait. It uses this bait to shake and lure the prey. When the prey is close, it will suddenly bite and catch it and then swallow it.

The anglerfish meat is rich in vitamins A and C. The meat is as tasty as that of a lobster. It is firm and not loose. It has full fiber elasticity and is more delicious than ordinary fish. The collagen is very rich. The tail muscles can be used for fresh food or processing to make fish pine, etc. The fish belly and fish seeds are high-nutrition foods, the skin can be made into glue, the liver can take cod liver oil and the fishbone is the raw material for processing the bonefish powder. It is rich in calcium, phosphorus, iron and other trace elements, the nutritional value is still relatively high. Regular consumption of anglerfish liver helps protect eyesight and prevent liver disease.

In Kantō, Japan, the anglerfish is known as the best quality food in the world, and it is called “the west has puffer fish and the east has anglerfish”.

“Get it up quickly.” Su Liang can’t wait, for fear that the three or four thousand yuan fish will run away.

“Look, there are two more.” Su Xiaolin suddenly pulled the net, shook off some of the miscellaneous fish and revealed two other anglerfish, about 10 Jin(5kg) each. They were motionless and they were probably full of other fish.

The three men were in a hurry and used the net bag to get the three anglerfish up first.

“A’Jing, aren’t we going to make farms or keep them to lay eggs?” Su Liang asked.

“I don’t know which of the three males or females.” Su Xiaolin stared at the three fishes for a moment and found no visible difference.

“Oh, these three are both male and female.” Su Jing laughed.

“What do you mean?” Su Liang and Su Xiaolin were stunned.

“Because both the mother and the father are together, most of the body belongs to the mother, this part…” Su Jing pointed to the bizarre mass on both sides of anglerfish and said, “This part belongs to the father.”

Su Liang and Su Xiaolin were still ignorant, so Su Jing had to explain in detail.

When anglerfish is young, males and females are separated. Males are very small, only one-thousandth of females. When they are long enough to mate, they lose their digestive system. In order to survive, male fish must find a female and parasitize on the body of females. Males bite females, release an enzyme that dissolves skin tissue and binds to females.

In this way, the sperm-liquid of male fish enters into the body of female fish and gets the nutrition of female fish at the same time. However, the male soon dies, leaving only a mass of testicles ready to fertilize the eggs when the female ovulates.

“It’s a world of wonder.” Su Liang and Su Xiaolin were amazed.

“That is to say, all three can lay eggs?” Su Liang asked.

“In theory, that’s true, but it’s too difficult to train young fish. If we don’t do this, we’ll sell them all.” Su Jing didn’t really build mariculture farms for fish now and is only fishing. It took months for fish farms to harvest. It was too slow.

The trio fished all the big fish and when they were too small, they returned them to the sea and the harvest was 200 or 300 Jin(100 or 150 Kg).

Su Jing immediately called Boss Zhao of the Jinyu Restaurant, who bought the seafood at the high price last time with the tuna fish. After all, there are so many fishes and his uncle’s seafood shop will not be able to use them all. When Boss Zhao heard that there were three anglerfish with about ten Jin and twenty lobsters, he immediately said he would come over. In fact, Boss Zhao was preparing to entertain some distinguished guests and needed fresh wild seafood.

When Su Jing moved two or three hundred jin fish to the Great Seafood Restaurant, they shocked the villagers again.

“A’Liang, Xiaolin, where did you get so many fish?” asked several men who fished with Su Liang and Su Xiaolin the other day.

“I went to catch it with A’Jing. I said that A’Jing was lucky. You still don’t believe it.” Su Liang laughed and it seemed he was very happy, but he was very careful not to say anything about bait.

Several men were envious, thinking that Su Jing had such good luck. There were no miscellaneous fish and there were lobster, anglerfish and other precious species in the two or three hundred jin, which were estimated to be worth more than 10,000 yuan.

“Good boy, you really have your hands on it.” Su Zhenhong also laughed.

“What fish do you want, Uncle? Pick it first. Boss Zhao will come and collect the rest later.” Su Jing laughed.

“Good.” Surely Su Zhenhong would not be polite to Su Jing. He picked out some fishes that guests had ordered. But he didn’t have any kind of water tank so he only chose more than twenty Jin in total.

“What a big anglerfish.” There was a loud voice in the crowd. A slightly plump middle-aged man and a middle-aged beauty led a little boy, beside which came a middle-aged man with a tiger’s back and a bear’s waist.

“Welcome, Mr. Wang.” Su Jing smiled. It was Wang Zhuo, a middle-aged man with a slightly plump figure. The middle-aged man with a tiger’s back and a bear’s waist also saw him. His name is Qian Shufeng. After he was thrown out of the western restaurant yesterday, Wang Zhuo took him to his restaurant for dinner.

“Yesterday I smelled your steamed meat and I got quite greedy, but I wasn’t able to taste any of it.” Wang Zhuo laughed, looking in a very good mood.

“When Mr. Wang comes in person, I won’t hide my clumsiness.” Su Jing nodded and laughed. He was very fond of Wang Zhuo’s polite attitude, and Wang Zhuo punished Boss Li and Zhao Jun for him. He was angry for him, even if he invited Wang Zhuo to eat for free.

“Mr. Su, you aren’t going to use this anglerfish?” Qian Shufeng looked at the anglerfish of more than twenty Jin with glaring eyes.

“I am not, I’m going to sell them.” Su Jing said truthfully.

“Can this anglerfish be sold to me? My restaurant is desperately in need of such a town store treasure.” Qian Shufeng was thrilled.

“Er…” Su Jing was stunned. He naturally wanted to sell the anglerfishes, but he had already promised Boss Zhao. If his Uncle picked one out, it would be reasonable. Boss Zhao would not have any objection, but he Boss Zhao would not like it if he sold it to anyone else.