021 The theme of the United Nations World Oceans Day is "The Ocean: Life and Livelihoods". The work and life of more than 3 billion people in the world are highly dependent on fish, shrimp, crab, snail, shellfish, octopus, squid, squid, kelp, seaweed and other seafood from the ocean. A vibrant and healthy ocean is about the well-being of all fishermen and all foodies. Today, Mingjian Jun specially invited Mr. Liu Cuibo, a fisherman who lives in Caijiabao Village, Binhai New District, Tianjin, and has been riding the waves for more than 40 years to tell us about the fishing history of Bohai Bay -
The dialect exudes a strong local smell, blending in with the former Human wisdom, they are full of fun. There are many such dialects in my hometown.
My hometown is by the Bohai Bay, and the fishermen who live by the sea in my hometown call the seafood and products caught in the sea as fishy goods, and when these seafood exist in pieces in the sea, they are also called live fields. The context of live fields is very rich and broad. For example, migratory species with high yield and high value are called big live fields, and shellfish, fish, shrimp, and small crabs produced in front of the house are called small live fields, and they are produced in low water temperature. The month of the month is called Lenghuotian. Fishing, shrimp hunting, and catching shellfish from the sea are called Zhihuotian. Which sea area is highly productive is called Huotian. Therefore, some people understand the live field as fishing flood like a piece of farmland waiting to be cut. From a certain point of view, fishing in the sea is somewhat similar to hunting, nomadic herding and even farming, and the term "living field" is more intriguing.
There are many fishy goods in my hometown, and they are also delicious. The old people often say that "water" is good. The sea in my hometown used to be very rich, with a rich variety of seafood, especially the clams, cockles, clams, snails and other shellfish produced are delicious and sweet. These are all inseparable from the unique natural ecological environment here.
In the early 1960s, I was born in Caijiabao Village, Binhai New District, Tianjin, which is only separated from the sea by a wall. In this ancient fishing village with a history of more than 600 years, I have heard and experienced many stories of fishermen. I have been devoted to collecting and sorting out the traditional fisherman culture of my hometown for many years. The difficulty of the seniors to rely on the sky to eat, and the foresight of their plow waves and Muhai.
Caijiabao Fishing Port Photo: Liu Cuibo
In the 1950s, people in their hometown who were drying salt built a ridge called Haidao on the tidal zone of beach , and began to have a stable coastline. When the tide recedes, there will be a unique landscape here. There are thousands of hectares of salt fields on the shore, and the sea salt that is as crystal clear as jade sand is piled up into mountains. Baili Beach's reputation. The locals call the intertidal zone Xinjiang, and there is a layer of very soft mud on the Xinjiang, which is called thin mud soup. The thin mud soup is made of silt deposited with the river water, rich in organic nutrients, and when the tide recedes, it is tanned in the sun with a dark layer of oil. When the tide rises, these nutrients melt into the sea water, moisturizing thousands of marine organisms, and as if fertilizing, the "living fields" here are particularly plump, so the old people say that they benefit from the "water" here.
Because "water" is good, there is a local fishing proverb: Lixia, Xiaomanjiang is red. It means that from the beginning of summer to Xiaoman, when the tide covers the black beach, people will see that the yellowish water here will be dyed red by the seedlings of fish, shrimp, crab and shellfish on a day with smooth wind and fine waves.It used to be the breeding ground of various fishery resources with high economic value in my country. After the beginning of summer, the "big live fields" began to sow seeds one after another. , yellow croaker (small yellow croaker) , mackerel (big fish) , mackerel ( blue dot mackerel ) , hairtail , etc. come here to spawn.
Before the 1980s, there was no artificial hatching technology for fish and shrimp here, and the fishermen in the fishing villages relied on the tide to bring in fish and shrimp seedlings to engage in seawater farming. At that time, the big water dwarfs used for drying water in Changlu Hangu Salt Field were used by local fishermen to breed fish and shrimp. In late spring and early summer, the seedlings of fish and shrimp come to Dashuiwangzi. After a summer of careful care, autumn is the harvest season for fishermen. When the time comes, they will be able to harvest the prawns and many other fish and prawns by plugging in the fishing foil.
Prawn farm Picture: Liu Cuibo
Shrimp Qianer is also a local dialect. Chinese prawn is a kind of migratory marine organism with high economic value in fishery. After the beginning of summer every year, many broodstock prawns enter the Bohai Bay to spawn. The shrimp seedlings reach maturity in the Mid-Autumn Festival and start to migrate to the sea after mating. People in my hometown call the small prawns that haven’t finished mating as Shrimp Qian’er. After the Mid-Autumn Festival, the shrimp that are enclosed in the big water are not fished out in time, and they will be plunged into the mud at any time to become the ration of other fish and shrimp.
People who are engaged in farming will treat the "living fields" like they take care of farmland, and they will definitely harvest in the season they should be harvested.However, the small shrimps living in the sea have been ruthlessly devastated by greedy people for many years. Now the wild environment of Chinese shrimp is worrying and needs to be improved urgently. The wise men among my ancestors have long thought of these problems. They called the small prawns a long time ago, and they also called the small yellow croaker that was born in that year as Huanghuayangzi, small mullet, and small squid. The fish is called swallow fish stick, the small barracuda is called barracuda lamb, the small sea catfish (spot-tailed goby) is called catfish yaer, the small crab is called crab stubble, etc. They deliberately label these seedlings, It is not difficult to understand their expectations of Litao Muhai. There is also an old fisherman's proverb here - the net does not hit. It means that at the summer solstice season, the fishing activities of purse seine and fishing are suspended, which is the early and spontaneous agreement of the ancestors to stop fishing.
The fishermen in my hometown also have a dialect - Kangai, which means that the migratory fish and shrimp will go straight to the shallow beach after returning. The beach here has sufficient food to facilitate their reproduction, and is an important breeding ground for many marine creatures. In fact, this beach is also guarded by many small living fields all year round, which are different varieties of shellfish, fish, shrimp and small crabs. Some of them crawl on the Xinjiang, some build their nests on the Xinjiang, and some advance and retreat with the tide, and the Xinjiang is their home. In Xinjiang, there is a very small shellfish-Smooth Helan clam, because it is as small as a grain of rice, the locals call it rice clam, and it is the bottom of the marine life here in the food chain. People often eat it in the stomachs of some shrimps, crabs, and fish. See them in the bag or intestines. It is an important food for large living fields such as prawns, sea crabs and some fish. In fact, they are not only delicious food for fish, shrimp, crab and shellfish, but also food for many seabirds, so this sea area was named by fishery experts as the breeding ground and bait ground for fishery resources, and by bird experts as waterbirds. and a migratory station for sea birds.
Waterbirds foraging on the tidal flat Picture: Liu Lebin
During the Grain Rain season, when the big farms in the Bohai Bay are "opening the sickle", the fishermen in my hometown have a proverb: Grain Rain Open net boats before and after. It means that before and after the Grain Rain, fishing boats loaded with fishing nets specially designed for large live fields set sail, first to catch small yellow croaker, and then to catch large mullet, and the peak fishing season is here. In those days, there was a method of purse seine fishing called net fishing. In the traditional custom of "posting a boat pair" by local fishermen, there is such a couplet in the fisherman's unique Spring Festival couplet: Nine Songs and Three Borders: Water, one net and two boats of fish. It means that there are three beaches in the Tianjin waters (Southern, Eastern, and Northern) around the bottom of the Nine Rivers. It is common for fishermen to catch two boats of fish in one net during the peak fishing season, so it became their New Year The beginning of prayer.
According to the Records of Rebuilding the Tianjin Mansion, in the ninth year of Yongzheng (1731), the governor of Zhili Tang Zhiyu petitioned the emperor for his decree to grant permission, saying that “fishing boats shall not be requisitioned for transportation during the period from Grain Rain to Mang Seeds”, because “people fishing boats in the Tianjin area”. They specialize in selling fish, and every year after the Grain Rain, before the awns are harvested, it is like the three farmers’ hope of autumn.” It can be seen that the fishery flourished when the large living fields in the Tianjin sea area returned. Today, the small yellow croaker and the mullet have almost disappeared in the Bohai Bay for many years, and the fate of prawns and sea crabs is also worrying.
The fishing boat returns from fishing Picture: Liu Cuibo
The sea in his hometown was once rich, and it is closely related to another natural ecological environment here.In the subtidal zone four or five nautical miles to the southeast of Caijiabao Village, there are many sand hills distributed along the 38° north latitude to the south. The sand hills are covered with oysters and become the largest living area in the north of the Yangtze River in my country. Oyster Reef, officially known as Dashentang Oyster Reef. The locals call oysters big clams. There are different varieties of big clams growing on these different sand hills. The fishermen call them thorn clams, tongue clams, round clams , dog-head clams, etc. according to their different shapes. Listen to what the old people say , The "water" in this sea area is also very good, there are many "living fields", and it is delicious. In the spring of 2021, this sand hill will become the Tianjin Binhai National Marine Park, which belongs to the first-class national marine ecological reserve.
The scattered sand hills are covered with big clams. The dialect of my hometown calls it clams, and the edges are called gangbianzi. In recent years, the man-made damage has been extremely serious, and it is very different from what I looked like when I was a child.
Before the 1960s, fishermen here used cotton or twine to weave nets, which were then dipped in pig blood and sun-dried before use. Such fishing net cannot come into contact with the sharp clams on the clams, but the fish, shrimps, crabs and shells near Gangbianzi are more abundant than other sea areas, so only some captains rely on superb skills to skillfully bypass the clams, here To obtain harvests that cannot be obtained elsewhere, this way of fishing is called groping. In March, I touched red shrimp (long-arm shrimp) , grass shrimp (brown shrimp) , dog shrimp (drum shrimp) , etc., and later Pipi shrimp and sea crabs, especially the most It is the skeleton child ( ) . In May and June, conch (pulse red snail) began to be mass-produced. Gangbianzi produced conch with thin skin and fat, which was one of the important seafood products exported for foreign exchange that year.According to the archives I collected, in 1973, Tianjin Municipal Government approved the purchase price of aquatic products, and the conch produced in Hangu was 0.08 yuan per catty for 1-4 heads, 0.06 yuan for 5-7 heads, and 0.04 yuan for more than 8 heads. The export standard subsidy is 0.12 yuan per kilogram. At that time, when the conch was harvested, the spacious yard of the aquatic product purchasing station in the west end of Caijiabao Village was full of fishermen women who were immersed in processing the conch meat. After cleaning and drying, it was exported to all over the world. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, the prawns began to gather and prepare to migrate. The experienced captain drove the fishing boat to the edge of Kaigang (place name), and when the Xinjiang tide (menarche) came out, he cast fishing nets down the river, and then hit the edge of Yaogang. A single net will "become a burden". The net production of one or two hundred catties is not an extravagant hope, but the climax of the harvest throughout the day.
Caijiabao fishing for oysters Photo: Liu Cuibo When I got on the boat, the fishing boat in the village began to completely change from a sailboat to a motor boat. I have seen a sailboat, but I have never used it. It is easier to use a motorized fishing boat to feel the post. The harvest that year was mainly skeleton and conch, and the daily harvest was quite abundant.
In their hometown, people find four kinds of shellfish known as "Four Fresh", they are fresh clams, clams , clams ( hairy clams ) and conch, they are in both Shagang and Gangbianzi. There are births.
At that time, although the big clam meat was very delicious, there was also a fishing proverb of "fresh clams, clam meat, tofu soup ", which was used by pregnant women in fishing villages as a good medicine for to promote milk , but in the 1980s, fishermen Still reluctant to catch a fishing net to catch it, at that time Mogang aimed at Gangbianzi.Later, the wire of the polyvinyl chloride fishing net became thicker and thicker, making the net "sturdy and durable". Some fishermen began to look for fish on the big clams, and the big clams and the fish were caught in the fishing net, and the fish was kept. Only a few large clams with a lot of meat are left to eat by themselves, and the rest are thrown back. This way of fishing is called Pagang. At that time, there were still a lot of big clams on the clams, and the time for casting the net was very short. It only took ten minutes to complete the process from casting the net to catching the net. Sometimes the time of the fishing net in the water was only three or four. minute. I remember that in the fall of that year, when we were on the Yaogang, there were not only clams, but also many dead little stickleback lambs (spotted juvenile fish), but more of them were skeleton crabs, The third brother weighed them curiously, and caught more than 360 catties in one net. According to the experienced brother, according to his judgment, it was a double-boat trawling fishing boat.
In the 1990s, with the use of satellite navigation equipment, it was easier for fishermen to touch the post. In those years, I used the navigator to draw my own coordinate map, and I followed it to guide and feel the post, which became my pride. But later, someone came up with the idea of this sand hill, and the ships digging clams and sand appeared here, and the sand hill was seriously damaged. It was also in this era that fishermen began to use large clams as their catch, which became a life-saving straw for local fishermen to alleviate the shortage of fishery resources. The method of fishing has also changed from pulling nets to raking. The method of nail-rake fishing is called ganging. The rake teeth with a length of more than a foot are inserted into the hard sand gang, and the fixed clams are pryed, and the large clams and conch shells are filtered out and put into the net, so that the height of the clams continues to decrease. For Shagang, it is another fatal damage besides dredging.Later, I learned that the scientific community has confirmed that clams, or oyster reefs, have extremely high ecological value such as nurturing fishery resources, purifying seawater, and protecting seawalls. Its preciousness is self-evident.
Sunrise on the shore Photo: Liu Cuibo
In recent years, with the decline of Shagang and the lack of intertidal zone, the "water" here is getting worse and less live fields. Looking back, I am saddened. If you have living fields at home, please be kind and take good care of our original natural ecological environment. "It's not too late." Only by insisting on Litao Muhai and protecting the "water" here can we leave a sustainable future for future generations. A valuable resource for development!
-Liu Cuibo-
Caijiabao Village, Binhai Hangu, Tianjin, director of Tianjin Binhai New Area Hangu Fishermen Association, member of Tianjin Writers Association, member of Tianjin Photographers Association, and member of Tianjin North Xinjiang Wetland Protection Volunteer Association. He has been engaged in marine fishery production for many years. He is keen on the inheritance of traditional fisherman culture and natural ecological protection. He loves literature, art and photography.
Source: Hai Mingjian Liu Cuibo
