1. Wild Yangtze River pufferfish in crisis
There are many kinds of puffer fish, at least more than 200 species in the world, and there are more than 40 species in China alone, the vast majority of which are oriental pufferfish. The puffer fish, famous for its three fresh dishes on the Yangtze River, is a typical dark-striped oriental pufferfish.
The Yangtze River puffer fish is delicious and nutritious, and has been highly sought after since ancient times. The Spring and Autumn Warring States Classic of Mountains and Seas records for the first time the scenes of people eating pufferfish and points out that pufferfish are highly poisonous. The Tang and Song dynasties were the peak of China's ancient economy and culture, and people's love for puffer fish also reached an incomparable point. Su Shi, a great poet of the Northern Song Dynasty, lamented the delicacy of pufferfish and left a phrase that has been passed down through the ages.
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The decline of the Yangtze River pufferfish began in the mid-1980s, as opposed to the wild pufferfish that inhabited the Yangtze River in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, which can be described as a large number. The "Chronicle of Jiangyin City" once described the harvest scene of the Three Fresh Foods on the Yangtze River in 1955: a total of 2,000 quintals of knife fish, 9,400 quintals of anchovies, and 2,450 quintals of puffer fish were caught. Ordinary people living in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, it is not a luxury to taste puffer fish every Spring in March.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, the Yangtze River, like the Yellow River, the Pearl River and most other rivers in China, a large amount of industrial sewage, domestic wastewater, farmland irrigation water, almost without any purification treatment directly discharged to the Yangtze River and its tributaries. As a result, the water quality of the Yangtze River continues to deteriorate, forming hundreds of kilometers of sewage belts in severe cases.
Freshwater fish are afraid of sewage, there's no doubt about it, but for that
Blowfish are even more influential. The Yangtze River pufferfish is a typical migratory fish species, which swims to the deep sea area when the water temperature drops in the autumn of each year, and then migrates to Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake in the middle of the Yangtze River from April to June of the following year to mate and spawn. Similar to the migratory knifefish, it is not how industrious the puffer fish is, but that the eggs cannot withstand the high salinity of the seawater, and in the process of the puffer fish going upstream, the water flow constantly stimulates the belly of the puffer fish, accelerating the development and maturity of the gonads.
With the presence of sewage belts, puffer fish cannot migrate normally to spawn, and the number can only be reduced. The dams, sluices, and hydropower stations that have risen from the ground in various sections of the Yangtze River have dealt a fatal blow to the migration of puffer fish.
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On the other hand, in the 1990s, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and other countries blew up a wave of taste of puffer fish. At that time, captive culture was in its infancy and production was limited, so rounding up wild puffer fish became the only way.
Under the influence of multiple factors, wild pufferfish in the middle and late 1990s in the Yangtze River waters have become a scarce fish, and after 2000, wild Yangtze River pufferfish have been difficult to find.
Unique delicacy: pufferfish
2. Entanglement of puffer fish
The market development of the puffer fish in China can be described as difficult, and this is all due to its deadly toxicity. Throughout the 80s, consumers who were poisoned by eating puffer fish occurred every year. When encountering a severe condition, the poisoned person has only a few minutes from the onset of symptoms to the cessation of breathing. In order to control this situation, in 1990, the national health authorities issued the "Measures for the Management of Aquatic Products Sanitation", which for the first time explicitly prohibited puffer fish from entering the market, and no restaurant or hotel could cook puffer fish.
The powerful toxin of the pufferfish is the direct cause of the introduction of the Measures. The toxin of the pufferfish is concentrated in the liver, kidneys, blood, eyes and other places, it can block the inflow of sodium ions in the blood, block the transmission capacity of nerve signals, and eventually lead to nerve paralysis and cause death. It is 1250 times more toxic than sodium chloride, and it takes only 0.5 mg to kill people on the spot. Moreover, tetrodotoxin molecules are stable, like the traditional cooking technology in the pickling, exposure, steaming seems to have no way to take it, which is also the origin of the "desperate to eat puffer fish" saying.
It should be admitted that the toxin of the pufferfish has a huge effect and should not be underestimated. Tetrodotoxin can be used as a local anesthetic, and the effect is stronger than ordinary anesthetics, and foreign scientific institutions have mixed tetrodotoxin and anesthetics in proportion to apply for patents and sales. Scientists further found that tetrodotoxin has an excellent effect on cancer pain, and the swelling and pain improved significantly after two injections per day and 3 consecutive days. Chinese scientists injected a trace amount of tetrodotoxin into drug addicts, which greatly reduced their burning pain.
Blowfish Industry Magazine pointed out that the demand for tetrodotoxin is much greater than the demand for puffer fish. At present, the market price of tetrodotoxin, which is more than 99% pure per gram, has climbed to $30,000 and is continuing to rise.
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3. The ups and downs and development of the puffer fish market
Since the implementation of the "Measures", on the one hand, the phenomenon of folk consumption of puffer fish has shifted to the underground, mostly in some remote farms and vegetable markets. So as early as 2004, the Yangzhong Culinary Association formulated a set of edible standards for processing puffer fish to minimize the harm of puffer fish. On the other hand, breakthroughs have been made in the artificial breeding of puffer fish, and the export market for puffer fish has been expanding.
In fact, artificial breeding and rearing of puffer fish can be traced back to the 1980s, but the real maturity and development were in the 90s. As mentioned above, puffer fish is highly toxic, and the source of toxins is mainly algae and shellfish ingested by puffer fish, so artificially by adding specific foods, tetrodotoxin is greatly reduced, and even non-toxic.
The artificial breeding and breeding of puffer fish in China is mainly divided into two categories, one is the sea light migratory fish dominated by dark-striped oriental pufferfish, which is often referred to as the Yangtze River pufferfish; the other is the redfin oriental pufferfish farmed offshore. Among them, the former is limited by the region, the output is far inferior to the latter, and is mainly concentrated in Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian and Anhui provinces, while the freshwater puffer fish production in Guangdong Province exceeds 6,000 tons, accounting for up to 64%.
The main force of China's puffer fish production is still marine aquaculture, of which Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong ranked among the best, with an annual output of several thousand tons, and the output of Fujian Province in 2019 was as high as 10,000 tons, ranking first.
But China's huge puffer fish production is heavily dependent on exports. Japan, South Korea and the Middle East are influenced by China's culture and have had a tradition of eating puffer fish since ancient times. Especially in Japan, from the Japanese prime minister to the ordinary people, cooking and eating puffer fish are regarded as a kind of enjoyment every New Year's Festival, and now it is a market that has reached the level of 10,000 tons. The puffer fish farmed in China basically relies on several major markets for digestion.
On the one hand, the popularity of artificial breeding, on the other hand, the non-toxicization of puffer fish has made breakthrough progress. In 2016, the puffer fish market ushered in a huge positive. In this year, the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and the State Food and Drug Administration officially issued the notice on conditionally liberalizing the processing and operation of the cultured redfin oriental pufferfish and the breeding of dark-striped oriental pufferfish. This means the first deregulation of the puffer fish market after a lapse of 26 years since 1990. The puffer fish market, which was previously in a gray area, can be sold, cooked and eaten openly if it meets the requirements.
The effect is immediate, in 2016, there were only a few hundred restaurants and hotels focusing on pufferfish, and by 2020, it has grown to more than 2,000, and the momentum has increased unabated.
Worryingly, while captive breeding of puffer fish is booming, the number of wild puffer fish in the Yangtze River has not increased significantly, during which at least 150 million puffer fish seedlings have been released on both sides of the Yangtze River. Therefore, the water environment of the Yangtze River water body is still a long way to go. However, fortunately, the 10-year fishing ban on the entire waters of the Yangtze River will be officially implemented from 2021, and it is believed that it will play a huge role in the restoration of the ecology and resources of the Yangtze River, when the wild puffer fish will re-emerge from the Yangtze River.
Original: Old High