Author: Tianya loves science
After typhoon "compass", on October 14, a beach in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, suddenly became a "sea of nails", and dense nails filled the entire beach. After hearing the news, a large number of people rushed to pick up snails, and the scene was very spectacular. After the snail leaves the water, it dies quickly after being exposed to the sun. People have to race against time, or they're really sorry for the gifts of nature. Some fishermen said that usually they can only pick up a dozen pounds a day, but now at least more than 100 pounds a day is no problem. This kind of snail is sold for 7 to 8 yuan a catty in the local market, and a day over 100 catties will bring fishermen almost a thousand yuan of income. In non-main production areas, some places even sell for 60 to 70 yuan a catty.
Dense snails (most of them are dead)
Fishermen pick up snails in the sea
The nail snail, scientifically known as the cone snail, is a species of organism of the order Mid-gastropod and the family Cone snail. It is distributed in the Philippines, the southeast coast of China, Taiwan, the coast south of Fujian, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and is basically a product of the South China Sea. Cone snails are filter eaters, feed on microorganisms in filtered water, and generally inhabit sand bottom mud at a depth of less than 10 cm. Since this area belongs to the subtidal zone, even at low tide, this area will not be exposed to the water. Therefore, it is not easy to catch the nail snail, and it is not bad to catch more than ten or twenty pounds on weekdays. This kind of snail meat is not much, but the taste is very fresh, the price is not expensive, many people like to eat.
Why do so many snails blow ashore during typhoons? It turned out that when the typhoon came, on the one hand, a large amount of fresh water brought by the heavy rain changed the salinity of the shallow water area, and on the other hand, the turbulent water flow stirred up the sediment at the bottom of the water, the sea water became turbid and dim, and the dissolved oxygen level was also reduced, and the rapid change in the habitat environment caused the snail to have a stress response, drilled out of the sediment, and then swept ashore by the violent storm surge.
However, not all typhoon areas will have a sea of snails, and this phenomenon is only possible in the main producing areas. In Taiwan, this kind of thing is not easy to find in ordinary times, usually about NT$120 (about 28 yuan) per kilogram, and people will only feast when there is a typhoon, so Taiwanese people also call it "typhoon snail". Every time there is a typhoon, people living by the sea will call their children who work outside and tell them to go home to taste the fresh snails and relieve their homesickness.
In fact, not only snails, but also other marine creatures will be blown ashore by the typhoon, especially shellfish. In October 2020, similar to this year's typhoon "Garden Rules", Typhoon Shadr crossed the South China Sea, and although Maoming, Guangdong Province, was not hit head-on, there were a large number of shellfish on one of the beaches, such as flower shellfish, white shells, wen clams and so on. The local fishermen were spoiled, but most of the shellfish that came ashore were dead.
Some fishermen go to shallow water, and a few scrapes with a fishing net can harvest a large number of shellfish, and the survival rate of them is about 70%.
It takes less than an hour to harvest 200 pounds, and in normal times, the sea cannot reach this amount in a day.
This situation is not unique to China, in early August 2020, Typhoon "Senrak" hit Thailand, the three-meter-high wind and waves at sea in Pattaya lasted for three days, after the typhoon left, a large number of mussels appeared on the local beach, thousands of people flocked to the beach to pick up mussels, many people even went out with their families. During the new crown pneumonia, many people are living in poverty and expecting mussels to improve their lives.