In the first week of July 2022, the Hong Kong social media fishing group suddenly erupted with unprecedented joy: "Returning with a full load, driving the most explosive boat, fishing and exploding, more than 100 in the whole boat, more than 300 in the whole boat, 14 pounds in personal fishing, everyone is reluctant to go..."
The lucky fishing friends showed a rich catch of fish, their eyes were full of gold, everyone smiled happily, and the luck of the heavens did not go away.
More anglers began to charter boats to go to sea, and fishing boats of HK$500 per capita were immediately in short supply. Even on weekdays, fishing must be booked a week in advance to compete for the boat. But as long as the boat is grabbed, everyone can return with a full load. For a time, day and night, people rented boats to go fishing.
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Not all fish were suddenly caught, only one fish: the golden pomfret.
A water fishing expert :
"In July this year, I was very strong, I kept eating, in short, I was all rushing to go." It goes over there, we fish over here. ”
According to the popular sea fishing locations shown by anglers, after the first week of July, a large number of golden pomfrets appeared at the same time throughout the waters around Hong Kong.
Anglers have also noticed that the number of pomfrets biting the hooks is not only large but also similar in size, speculating on social media that the sudden surge in golden pomfrets in the waters near Hong Kong in July is almost certainly not wild, but most likely farmed. Why do so many farmed fish suddenly appear in the waters around Hong Kong?
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Ah Shui recently went to sea for a day to catch enough pomfret, this time the fishing boat is also equipped with an advanced seabed detection system, as long as the fish can be found as soon as it is close.
After an hour's flight, we arrive at Po Tai Island, a popular fishing spot, where many anglers in Hong Kong have been harvesting golden pomfret. At this time, there are already sea fishing boats on the first step, and Ah Shui can't wait to prepare to show his fists - prepare the fishing rod, put on the equipment, load the bait, and prepare to start fishing.
After working hard for most of the day, only a few fish were harvested in the entire waters of Putai Island, and there was not a single golden pomfret. There was finally a big fish hooked, and Ah Shui was very excited, but unfortunately it was not a pomfret.
The advanced fish detection system was also useless, and the expectation was in vain. Ah Shui let the sea fishing boat change a few places still did not improve. The school of golden pomfrets suddenly appeared and disappeared, and sea fishing experts Ah Shui and Bonnie could not guess whether they had finished fishing or swam elsewhere. Where do they come from?
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Online fishing groups are already speculating that these close-sized, sudden surges in golden pomfrets are likely to come from deep-sea cage farms along the Yangjiang River in Guangdong Province, and typhoon Siamba made landfall along the Yangjiang River in Maoming in early July, destroying a large number of deep-sea cages, and a large number of farmed golden pomfrets took the opportunity to escape and swam to the waters around Hong Kong a few days later.
The Yangtze River is only more than 200 kilometers away from Hong Kong. Is it true that, as anglers speculate, the sudden surge in golden pomfrets comes from coastal cage farms in Yangjiang that were destroyed by typhoons?
At this time, it has been nearly a month since typhoon "Siamba" crossed the border, and many cages have not been repaired, and it is even worse to recall the day of the typhoon.
Yangjiang farmers:
"That wind, the waves, more than ten meters high, no cage can afford it, all the cages are 100 percent rotten, hit to no skin, many cages have been hit to the shore, and those who are still in the sea have sunk to the bottom of the sea, and there are only a few left."
Li Junjie, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Earth System Science, Chinese University, Hong Kong:
"I think there are two main factors in the damage caused by this typhoon to fishing rows, the first is the wind, which is very strong when the typhoon makes landfall. But with this strong wind and the change in the pressure inside it, there is the impact of the storm surge, then the storm surge actually means that the waves hit the fishing row, and I think these two factors combined will greatly affect the coastal areas this time. ”
Yangjiang is located in the southwest of Guangdong Province, the sea area of 12,000 square kilometers, the shoreline is extremely long, the deep-sea cage aquaculture industry is developing rapidly, the annual fishery output value of nearly 19 billion yuan in 2021, of which marine aquaculture accounts for more than 90%.
Chairman of the Hong Kong Seafood Federation Lee Chai Wah:
"What is the benefit of cage culture? It is not afraid of the cold, because it sinks to the bottom of the sea, and the water temperature on the seabed is warmer than the surface of the water when it is cold. ”
But Typhoon Siamba swept away 3 percent of fishery output and almost the annual harvest in one go.
Chairman of the Hong Kong Seafood Federation Lee Chai Wah:
"The fish just scattered in that net. I believe that not only Hong Kong, but also Hainan Island, Zhanjiang, Guangxi can be caught, that is, the entire South China Sea can catch these fish, because the number of lost fish is very large. ”
From visitors, these deep-sea cage owners learned for the first time about the whereabouts of the farmed fish they had worked so hard to raise but had escaped overnight.
Reporter: "You saw that the fish we raised were passed by the typhoon, and they caught it there, what do you think in your heart?" ”
Yangjiang farmers: "They must be cool to catch, we definitely can't do it here." ”
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The Guangdong Provincial Department of Agriculture said Typhoon Siamba dealt a devastating blow to deep-water cages in Yangxi County, Yangjiang City, the worst in nearly two decades, with many farmers waging heartache and worrying about whether there would be a similar climate disaster in the second half of this year.
Yuan Xiaojun, tenured research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Observation at Columbia University:
"There is a more special case in Asia, due to climate change, the intensity of typhoons in Asia has increased, which can be observed, that is, the number of strong typhoons has increased, and there was an average of one strong typhoon per year in the 70s, so now there are about 4 strong typhoons per year."
Yuan Xiaojun, a tenured professor at the Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Observation at Columbia University in New York, separated from Yangjiang City in Guangdong Province by 14,000 kilometers, also noticed the typhoon's damage to fisheries on the west coast of the Pacific.
Yuan Xiaojun, tenured research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Observation at Columbia University:
"We had a stronger typhoon than before, passing through their farming areas, so it caused such damage to their industry that we hadn't seen before."
Also paying close attention to the typhoon is the chairman of the Hong Kong Seafood Federation, Li Caihua, who is also a veteran seafood wholesaler in Hong Kong, and he has suffered heavy losses from typhoons on the surface fish steaks.
Chairman of the Hong Kong Seafood Federation Lee Chai Wah:
"Hong Kong has tried before, and the typhoon in Hong Kong broke down and the fish ran out. Anglers catch big groupers, and many boats catch fish, all the same as this situation. ”
In the 1970s, Hong Kong's economy took off, and its population soared from more than 3 million to nearly 5 million, and seafood was in short supply by natural fishing, and the artificial aquaculture industry using offshore waters developed rapidly.
Chairman of the Hong Kong Seafood Federation Lee Chai Wah:
"From the seventies to the seventies, the aquaculture industry began to slowly flourish. Those nine big gui (feasts) will definitely have seafood, eat a fish, steamed fish. At that time, if there were strong winds and waves and bad weather, there would be no fish to eat without a boat going out to sea. After there were no fish to eat, the fish farming industry began to flourish. ”
Chinese mainland's Journal of Fisheries disclosed that by 2019, there will be 1.4 million ordinary aquaculture cages in the coastal areas of Guangdong, Hainan and Fujian. These cages are mostly square, about 3-8 meters in length, width and height, and are placed in the offshore sea within a water depth of 15 meters; Around 2000, Norway developed large-scale deep-sea cage culture technology, which was soon introduced to China; In 2019, the deep-sea cages were also close to 20,000, and the circumference of such large cages ranged from 60 to 120 meters, and the breeding site began to invade the depths of the sea of more than 15 meters, which means that a deep-sea cage occupies at least a 15-meter-high sea body with a bottom area close to the size of a standard basketball court.
The Journal of Fisheries believes that from ordinary cages to deep-sea cages, "wind and wave resistance" and "industrial level" are stronger, for example, in 2019, 1.4 million ordinary cages produced 550,000 tons of marine fish, and nearly 20,000 deep-sea cages raised 200,000 tons of marine fish, with an average annual output of 2 tons per deep-sea cage. Li Caihua estimates that there are 4,000 marketable marine fish raised in a deep-sea cage a year, and more than 80% of Hong Kong's chilled marine fish come from deep-sea cages along the coast of Guangdong.
With a steady stream of demand and constantly evolving technology, humans invaded the seabed deeper, occupied a wider area, and the acquisition from the ocean was escalating. But interestingly, another product of the ocean, hurricanes and typhoons, are also escalating.
Yuan Xiaojun, tenured research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Observation at Columbia University:
"So since the 1980s, there have been systematic and accurate data to track typhoons and hurricanes, and what can this data determine over the course of more than 40 years?" The intensity of hurricanes and typhoons has increased, the rainfall of hurricanes and typhoons has increased, the storm surge caused by hurricanes and typhoons has increased, and the speed of hurricane and typhoon escalation has become faster. ”
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In this complex system, there is another pair of interesting but equally complex relationships: when extreme weather such as hurricanes and typhoons strike, who will be damaged? Who will benefit?
Li Junjie, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Earth System Science, Chinese University, Hong Kong:
"There have been massive heat waves in Europe, and in addition to affecting agriculture, even those ships carrying goods have affected the freight industry because of the drying up of the river. But this summer, off the coast of western France, they evaporated faster because of this heat wave, and this year's sea salt harvest was record-breaking, which has just happened, and one of the so-called cases of this trade-off is the case. ”
Dr. Li Junjie, Ph.D., Department of Earth System Science, University of Chinese, Hong Kong, has noticed a complex story of different subjects' interests and different joys and sorrows under the extreme weather of the ongoing heat wave in the northern hemisphere this year.
Li Junjie, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Earth System Science, Chinese University, Hong Kong:
"But I don't think it's going to last because as global warming continues, I think people must be affected more than they've gained."
Unexpectedly encountering a large number of lost farmed golden pomfrets and Hong Kong anglers returning with a full load is only a comedic element of the tragedy of "the cages along the Coast of Guangdong were destroyed and the fish were gone". In extreme weather, misfortune and disaster are the norm.
Yuan Xiaojun, tenured research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Observation at Columbia University:
"The extreme weather of the 2022 heat wave began in January, with the southern hemisphere occurring in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Australia; By March and April, the heat wave was happening in India and Pakistan; In the United States in May, the temperature in the spring alone has reached more than 33 degrees; By June and August, the heat wave had swept through many European countries, and there were also large outbreaks in China and the United States. ”
On August 3, when the temperature in Beijing was as high as 35 degrees, on this high humidity and extremely hot afternoon, the "Blue Book of China's Climate Change (2022)" was released in the China Meteorological Administration building in Zhongguancun, Haidian, Beijing.
Li Junjie, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Earth System Science, Chinese University, Hong Kong:
"The Blue Book on Climate Change, which mentions that according to China's observations, nine of the hottest decades in the previous 120 years occurred in the previous ten or twenty years. So that reminds me of a macro perspective, the climate report published by the United Nations, and they all found that in terms of average global temperatures, the previous seven years were also the hottest seven years on record. These two factors are global temperature and China's own temperature, but they both highlight a common point, that is, climate change is not a single country can be left alone. ”
The Blue Book also shows that china's surface average temperature, coastal sea level, permafrost activity layer thickness and other climate change indicators in 2021 have broken the observation record.
Yuan Xiaojun, tenured research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Observation at Columbia University:
"It's actually telling us that global warming is accelerating, whether or not the people on our planet are noticing it, whether they're guarding against it or not, that it's intensifying in its own way, accelerating."
The Blue Book did not attract much attention, and it was still the epidemic and war that occupied the vast majority of people's attention.
Yuan Xiaojun, tenured research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Observation at Columbia University:
"It is true that it has influenced the globally consistent process of fighting climate change. It is no longer in the first place that politicians and national leaders have to consider, they have more to consider. ”
Germany has been active in promoting carbon reduction, but in June it announced the restart of coal-fired power plants to cope with the energy crisis caused by the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Yuan Xiaojun, tenured research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Observation at Columbia University:
"I don't think we can bury our heads in the sand any longer, we've missed a lot of time."
At the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, environmentalists staged a protest show in which they dug pits in the sand and buried their heads in them, as a satire that participating countries would only meet constantly like ostriches burying their heads in sand to escape reality.
Today, twelve years later, under the epidemic and the war, this scene does not seem to be far away, it is still continuing.
Artificial golden pomfrets can be reared again after they die or escape, but not all natural species, nor all human foods, have a chance to return. Greenpeace in Hong Kong has worked hard to use a stage show to tell children about the relationship between the complex system and the loss of the system.
In Yangjiang, the restoration of deep-sea cages is underway, and fishermen hope to continue to raise gold pomfret in the deep sea in two or three months.
In Hong Kong, on Lee Cai Hua's wholesale stalls, golden pomfret is sold out today.
Producer: Ke Zhongping
Choreographer: Chen Yanhao, Lu Xiyun
Editor: Ding Xiao