The Sea Queen of 1985

Chapter 354: Chapter 354: School of Deep-sea Bigeye

”Look, what’s that?” Liang Xiaoyu had spotted it too. With no moonlight, why was the sea’s surface still glowing?

The other crew members also looked in the direction Liang Xiaoyu was pointing.

Han Xiaorui’s vision, now focused through Xiao Dai, swam over.

When she got a clear look at what it was, Han Xiaorui was stunned. They were actually deep-sea fish—bigeyes.

Their scientific name is *Priacanthidae*, of the order *Perciformes*, also commonly called bigeye or glasseye.

They had long, oval, and rather compressed bodies. Their mouths were large, slanted almost vertically. Their eyes were huge, with a diameter nearly half the length of their heads. The upper jawbone was wide, and both jaws, the vomer, and the palatine bones all had villiform teeth. The edge of the preopercle had fine serrations, with a strong spine at the corner. Their entire bodies were red, with yellow spots on the membranes of their dorsal, anal, and pelvic fins.

’Fish with eyes this big should be living more than five hundred meters underwater. Why have they all suddenly come up to the surface?’

But Han Xiaorui couldn’t worry about that now. She quickly said, ”Steer the boat over. That patch of light must be a school of fish.”

Wu Mengyue nodded. ”Fish that glow like that are always valuable. Based on my experience, they’re probably bigeyes.”

Han Xiaorui was taken aback. ’I had to rely on Xiao Dai to get close enough to identify them, but Wu Mengyue knew just from experience.’

”I’ll go tell Sister Shui to pull up the trawl net. Have the other two boats come over. We’ll encircle them, then cast our nets. Everyone, get the fishing nets ready! Adjust the net hauler.”

Hearing Han Xiaorui’s orders, everyone got to work in an orderly fashion.

Han Xiaorui told Chen Yishui about her and Wu Mengyue’s assessment. Chen Yishui took a careful look through her binoculars and immediately started steering the boat over.

Han Xiaorui grabbed the walkie-talkie. ”Uncle Qi, head toward the glow. Get your fishing nets ready. The fish are near the surface, looks like bigeyes. We’re going to cast our nets.”

Qi Heng heard her, picked up his binoculars, and had his crew pull in their nets. He steered the boat forward and spotted the glowing patch. ”Alright, I see it. Any school of fish this big is valuable.”

Han Xiaorui nodded. ”Yes. I’ll call Uncle Wu.”

”Alright, Xiao Han, just worry about your own boat,” Qi Heng said with a laugh. ”Old Wu and I are veteran captains. Don’t worry about us.”

”I trust you, Uncle Qi,” Han Xiaorui said with a smile. She hung up the walkie-talkie and contacted Wu Guangfu, telling him the same thing.

Wu Guangfu had already spotted the light and was heading over.

Thankfully, each boat had three fishing nets, just as Han Xiaorui had required. They were proving useful now that they’d encountered fish near the surface.

The three boats formed a triangle, surrounding the school of fish on the surface. They had to be careful of the reefs to avoid running aground.

Once in position, the crew cast their nets and used the net hauler to pull them in. Chen Yishui captained the boat while Wu Mengyue operated the hauler.

The three best net-casters—Sister Tang, Sister Yun, and Sister Lan—threw their nets wide and round, catching the most fish.

That single net brought in a good four to five hundred pounds of fish.

They quickly untangled the net. It was filled almost entirely with bigeyes of varying sizes.

”Wow, they really are bigeyes! These fish are expensive,” Liang Xiaoyu said as she sorted them.

Han Xiaorui saw them too. ”Sister Mengyue was right. The glow was coming from the bigeyes’ eyes.”

Han Xiaorui was about to squat down and help sort, but Liang Xiaoyu stopped her. ”Xiao Rui, it’s dark and the deck is wet. You should go back to the cabin. Don’t stand out here.”

”That’s right, Boss. You should head inside. We’re afraid we might bump into you. We can handle this work.”

Everyone else was sorting fish, but the nets kept coming in one after another. There were simply too many to keep up.

Han Xiaorui made an immediate decision. ”Stop sorting by size. Just toss them in the baskets and get them into cold storage. We’ll sort them on shore.”

The crew was completely overwhelmed. ”Alright, we’ll do that for now.”

The fish in the sea wait for no one, especially a school floating on the surface like this. They wouldn’t be there for long.

Now was the time to hurry. Every extra net they could cast meant another haul.

Each cast brought in three or four hundred pounds of the familiar bigeyes.

Han Xiaorui was ”chased” back into the cabin by the crew. From there, she used the walkie-talkie to direct Qi Heng and Wu Guangfu, telling them how to maneuver their boats closer to the school.

Both Qi Heng and Wu Guangfu were incredibly excited. They had never seen so many fish floating on the surface before.

Following Han Xiaorui’s instructions, the boats moved into position, and the crews cast their nets.

The male crew members were very strong, and some of them found the net hauler too slow.

So a few of them split off and started hauling the nets in by hand.

Although it was exhausting, they were indeed catching more fish than Han Xiaorui’s crew.

Chen Yishui also noticed the hauler was slow and worried the school would get away. ”Xiao Rui, two nets are enough for the hauler. We can use the third one for casting and pulling in by hand.”

Han Xiaorui refused immediately. ”We might catch a little more that way, but it’s incredibly exhausting.”

”So what if it’s exhausting?” Chen Yishui retorted. ”When is being a fisherman *not* exhausting? You’ll listen to me on this! The fish are right in front of us. We catch them first, talk later.”

It made no sense to stare at a school of fish and not catch them just to save a little energy.

With Chen Yishui’s order, Sister Tang and the others cast a net, and then four of them began to haul it up together.

As the net was about to break the surface, two more people joined in. Shouting in unison, they worked together to drag the net onto the boat.

Meanwhile, the net hauler wasn’t idle, continuing to pull in the other nets at top speed.

As more time passed, the glowing patch of fish grew smaller and smaller, until it finally disappeared completely.

Han Xiaorui checked the time. Two hours had passed.

Everyone was so tired they collapsed onto the deck, panting for breath.

No one could be bothered to clean the deck yet. First, they had to rest.

Despite their exhaustion, a rough estimate put their catch at over twenty thousand pounds of bigeye, and everyone’s faces immediately broke into wide smiles.

Liu Huamei stood up. ”Everyone must be tired and hungry, right? I’ll go make something to eat!”

At her words, everyone rubbed their stomachs. They were indeed hungry.

Hard work like that really works up an appetite.

When Liu Huamei reached the galley, Han Xiaorui was already standing by the refrigerator, wondering what to make.

”Xiao Rui, get out of here! The galley has too many sharp corners. It’d be terrible if you bumped your belly.”

Han Xiaorui smiled. ”It’s fine, I can control my body. You were just out there helping too. Now your hands are so tired they’re shaking. If you try to cook now, the hand holding the knife will be trembling.”

Liu Huamei’s hands were indeed shaking a little. ”Boil a pot of water, then. Put in some brown sugar, osmanthus, and a bit of ginger. Drinking that will warm everyone up.”

”I brought a lot of crispy crab roe shells for a late-night snack. They’re still crunchy! They’ll go perfectly with the brown sugar, ginger, and osmanthus tea.”

Hearing Liu Huamei lay out the plan so capably, Han Xiaorui realized there was no room for her to help. ”Alright, we’ll do as you say.”

By the time the late-night snack was ready, everyone had rested a bit and was now cleaning the deck.

A little later, while eating snacks and sipping the warm tea, Liang Xiaoyu asked, ”Sister Shui, that was my first time seeing fish floating on the surface like that. Why does that happen?”