Cut open the belly of a strange fish, and what came out was black gold

The bigger the fish Tian Kaihong raises, the more valuable it is; one can sell for tens of thousands of yuan on the market. The reason he will not sell a single fish even for 100,000 yuan is that by chance he discovered a big secret that lets him pull millions of yuan out of a single fish's belly. See how Tian Kaihong of Changyang Tujia Autonomous County in Hubei pulls black gold out of the belly of a big strange fish!

Tian Kaihong: Ah, good mountains and good water raise good fish.

This river is called the Qingjiang, a tributary of the Yangtze, and it is famous for its rich aquatic products.

Today, right by this river, Tian Kaihong, head of the fish farming base, is going to move the fish he raises to a new home.

The fish Tian Kaihong raises are no ordinary fish. The moment one surfaced, it startled a boatload of tourists passing by.

Tourist: Wow.

Tourist: Wow, so big.

Tourist: It's huge. It scared me half to death.

What kind of big fish could be so terrifying? Through an underwater camera we can see that this big fish has a pointed head, a wide-open mouth, and a vertical tail fin, making it look especially like a ferocious shark.

Tian Kaihong says this big fish has already grown for 10 years, and each one weighs more than two hundred jin. Today, he is going to move these big fellows to a new home.

This big fish is not only scary-looking, it can also hurt people. So the people invited to move them are all very experienced master workers.

This worker has been moving fish for ten years, and his skills are very seasoned.

Worker: This fish has to be turned over, and with a mouthful of water it calms down.

But even for such an experienced master worker, accidents are impossible to guard against when moving fish.

Reporter: What happened to your hand?

Worker: When I just grabbed the fish, its scale armor was quite sharp.

This fish has five raised ridge lines on its body, and the raised places are what the worker calls scale armor. When the tail sweeps forward, the sharp scale armor scrapes the worker's arm.

That is not even the worst of it. The tail is the most powerful part of this fish's whole body, and if you are hit directly by the tail, the consequences are quite serious.

Worker: When it swings over, if it hits your face, because our faces have been hit before. At the time it was red, and the next day it was all black and bruised.

The fish-moving worker also told the reporter that if the fish tail whips your leg, it can break a bone.

This fish's tail is so powerful because in the wild it relies on its powerful tail to drive its several-hundred-jin body from the sea, swimming thousands of kilometers up into rivers to spawn. This fish with extraordinary endurance is the sturgeon.

Today, Tian Kaihong plans to transport more than 30 big sturgeon to the base. Tian Kaihong says these big fish are his treasure for making big money. Moving such expensive fish certainly requires great care, but the key still lies in this fish's body structure.

Even though this sturgeon is big and its tail is strong, its body is very fragile. It has no bone spurs for support; it only has five rows of bony plates slightly harder than cartilage, and it is hard for it to withstand a strong impact.

Tian Kaihong specially prepared stretchers, and carried them one by one like wounded patients on stretchers into the fish tank truck.

This batch of fish being moved today is not ordinary sturgeon from the net cages; they are all pregnant female fish. Today they will move to the base's fish pond to await giving birth.

Tian Kaihong: Follow orders together, today our sturgeon are moving house, moving into a residential community.

After the sturgeon move, they live in this kind of high-end community with dedicated caretakers.

Tian Kaihong: If this fish were to go on the dining table.

Reporter: If it is sold for meat, right?

Tian Kaihong: Sold for meat is about 10,000, should sell for around 12,000 yuan, but now even if you offer 100,000 I will not sell.

Reporter: Even if I offer 100,000 yuan you will not sell?

Tian Kaihong: Right, I will not sell.

Selling one fish for 100,000 yuan is already astonishing, but Tian Kaihong's wealth secret goes far beyond this. By chance, Tian Kaihong discovered that this kind of fish's belly hides a kind of black gold with a market value of nearly one million yuan. This black gold drew Tian Kaihong to transform from a big fish farmer with annual sales of more than 60 million yuan into a professional gold digger. What kind of wealth mystery is hidden in this?

Tian Kaihong started his business at 29. He has grown vegetables and raised fish, and struggled for many years, but even after passing forty he still had not made money.

In 2009, at 43, Tian Kaihong fell seriously ill again. One afternoon, Tian Kaihong suddenly felt dizzy, with numbness in his limbs. A check at the hospital showed, the doctor said, that his cerebellar pituitary had drooped into his cervical spine, and he needed immediate cranial surgery.

Tian Kaihong: I might become a vegetative person, because the whole cranial cavity had to be opened. The surgery might also go badly and leave me hemiplegic, unable to walk off the operating table.

The surgery was very successful, and Tian Kaihong felt very lucky to have gotten his life back. After the surgery, Tian Kaihong went to Qingdao to relax, and attended an aquatic products trade fair.

At the aquatic products trade fair, Tian Kaihong discovered that a company was also farming fish in the Qingjiang. This company was only a dozen-plus kilometers away from Tian Kaihong's company, yet its annual sales had already surpassed 100 million yuan, all thanks to this sturgeon.

The sturgeon is the largest-bodied fish in the Yangtze. After reaching adulthood, a sturgeon generally can weigh more than 200 jin. The largest can grow to more than four meters long and over a thousand jin in weight, and can live as long as a hundred years. In the Yangtze River basin, everyone calls the sturgeon the "King of Yangtze Fish."

This sturgeon has already been raised for 7 years, and Tian Kaihong specially shows the reporter just how long it is.

Tian Kaihong: Stretch it out on this side, measure how long it is.

Reporter: How long is it?

Tian Kaihong: Two meters one-eight-something, 2 m 2, slow down, slow down, see how thick it is. 1 m 1, this is not even the thickest place, 1 m 1, chest circumference 1 m 1.

Tian Kaihong says this fish with a body length of 2 m 2 can only be considered medium-sized among sturgeon. The bigger and older the sturgeon is raised, the more valuable it is.

After discovering the business opportunity of farming sturgeon, Tian Kaihong learned upon looking into it that the sturgeon farmers in the Qingjiang all got rich from this fish. Tian Kaihong went to consult other farmers, and they all said this fish was very easy to raise.

Farmer: Sturgeon are relatively easy to raise; compared with other fish species, they grow fast and have strong disease resistance.

Farmer: As for feeding, it does not take much labor, and as for the whole farming model, there is no problem with mortality; there are few diseases.

Although the sturgeon grows to an astonishing size, what it eats is very simple.