The crayfish king Zhai Yongfei's story of farming crayfish
Zhai Yongfei, a farmer from Xiaohuayao Village, Huilong Town, Qidong City, Jiangsu Province, can be called the "Crayfish King" - not only for his annual sales of millions of kilograms of crayfish, but also for his successfully implemented crayfish breeding technology, and for his title as a deputy to the Qidong City People's Congress. Although his crayfish business is running smoothly and he is envied by those both inside and outside the trade, Zhai Yongfei sighed during an interview on April 22: "This crayfish business is getting harder and harder to do." Why? Because he is deeply worried about the current shortage of crayfish, their small size, and the poisoning that kills them.
Selling shrimp by the basket, yet only a few tails?
When it comes to crayfish, what worries Zhai Yongfei most is that in recent years, the seemingly inexhaustible wild crayfish resource has been steadily shrinking. "Farmers used to sell shrimp by the whole bag or basket, but nowadays they often carry just half a jin or eight liang, or even count the tails on their fingers." Zhai Yongfei feels the most heartache over those small crayfish only five or six centimeters long. "You can't wait for a crab to turn red before cooking it. Let these small shrimp grow for another month or so, and their weight multiplies several times over, and the unit price per 500 grams would rise from three or four yuan to more than 10 yuan. With endless indiscriminate catching, how can the crayfish have time to grow?" Zhai Yongfei said that in April and May 2004, his daily purchases of crayfish once reached an astonishing fifty or sixty thousand kilograms, but now it is less than 10,000 kilograms.
"From morning to night, you can hardly catch eight or ten crayfish in a dozen shrimp nets." Sighed Wu Xilin, an old farmer over seventy from Songqiao Village, Wangbao Town. In the past, netting crayfish was an important source of extra income for the elderly couple. "Now, relying on netting crayfish, it's hard to afford even a few rounds of old wine." The old man smacked his lips and said, "All year round, between netting and groping and enclosing with nets, the crayfish can hardly escape, let alone pass on to their offspring." "As for crayfish yield per unit area, it's only one or two dozen kilograms. But seven or eight years ago, it was at least about 100 kilograms." A village cadre, speaking of the wild crayfish that once filled the pockets of thousands of households, could not help but feel sorrow and loss.
The "empty-bodied crayfish" has sounded a warning
Early spring is the breeding season after the crayfish's winter dormancy. At this time, crayfish bear the heavy responsibility of reproducing their offspring; eating one crayfish at this time is equivalent to eating thousands of its offspring. Unfortunately, at this time many restaurants in the city, in order to attract customers, roll out crayfish banquets ahead of schedule. As a result, the shrimp nets in the countryside go into the water early, and large numbers of "parent shrimp" that are about to reproduce meet their doom, among them many large but meatless "empty-bodied shrimp" that have just finished breeding their young. When describing this situation, Zhai Yongfei, who over the years has become thoroughly familiar with the rules of crayfish growth and development, appeared very helpless.
"We can't keep eating them like this!" On many occasions, especially at People's Congress deputy activities and during inspections by leaders or media interviews, Zhai Yongfei always loudly voiced his suggestion "on establishing a closed season for crayfish." "These 100 days at the start and end of the year should prohibit the catching and eating of crayfish. Crayfish have extremely strong reproductive capacity. If enough breeding stock and growing space are left, there will be very gratifying returns after spring. Ordinary people understand this reasoning too, but it requires the government and fisheries departments to take tough measures, such as banning market trading and restaurant cooking and sales. Without the lure of profit, farmers will not 'kill the goose that lays the golden egg' by catching 'parent shrimp' in early spring."
Why has the proportion of dead crayfish suddenly risen?
After crayfish are caught, a certain proportion will die, but Zhai Yongfei recently discovered that more outsiders have come to sell shrimp, and the mortality rate of the crayfish they sell is especially high. Puzzled, Zhai Yongfei made inquiries through various channels and finally figured it out: it turned out that a group of outsiders, under the cover of night, used a low-toxicity pesticide to poison and catch crayfish on a large scale. In any ditch or river they visited, the crayfish were almost "wiped out." Such ruthless poisoning of shrimp not only poses a serious threat to food safety, but also deals a devastating blow to crayfish resources. "If this trend is not stopped, the shrimp will cease to exist!" Zhai Yongfei expressed boundless indignation about this. The author learned that because these poachers choose to operate at night, the opposition of the elderly, weak, women and children in the countryside is not enough to deter them, so these people act without scruple when carrying out their poaching.
During the interview with Zhai Yongfei, a village cadre from Shuangxian Village, Beixin Town, also told the author that their village's crayfish resources had likewise suffered from poisoning by outside "ghosts." "Killing both large and small alike breaks the farmers' hearts, especially the many elderly people who rely on netting crayfish to earn pocket money - they stamp their feet in anger." This is how the village cadre described the public reaction.
"A tiny crayfish is a treasure bestowed by heaven." "The city's more than 200,000 mu of water surface alone yields hundreds of millions of yuan from crayfish." "Shrimp prices are higher than meat prices; the significance of protecting crayfish far exceeds simply growing good grain and cotton." Interviewing around the topic of crayfish, countless people voiced the same sentiments as Zhai Yongfei.