Chapter 778: Leatherback Sea Turtle Monitoring System
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Brother Wolf and a few others were on the shore brushing the oysters. As the oysters lived in the sea while clinging to the boat, there were some parasites and hermit crabs on their shells. Before the oysters could be eaten, the parasites and hermit crabs needed to be brushed off.
Since they were on the shore brushing the oysters, Li Du took the condiments out.
As the yacht already had condiments such as onion, ginger, and garlic, he took out special condiments such as cooking wine, steam fish sauce, chopped chili, and pickled chili.
Luckily, he had brought enough condiments. Otherwise, this meal would definitely not have been tasty.
With the condiments taken out and the oysters that were cleaned and brushed brought over by Godzilla, Li Du began cooking with all his might.
The more people there were, the more mouths Li Du had to feed. Moreover, with a glutton like Godzilla, Li Du had to cook more food.
Steaming was the easiest method for cooking oysters. After filling up a two-layered steamer in the yacht’s kitchen with the oysters, all that was left for Li Du to do was to prepare a bowl of sauce.
While Brother Wolf and the others brushed the oysters, they deliberately picked out the large oysters and pried open and scooped out the meat from all the small oysters as per Li Du’s request. By doing so, Li Du would have an easier time cooking them.
Like livestock, the group of them worked very hard for good food. In total, they managed to scoop out a large plate of oyster meat.
After placing the oyster meat into a wok and briefly frying them, Li Du took them out and instructed Godzilla to lay them outside to be briefly air-dried, so as to remove the water inside them.
Li Du cut the celery, which Brother Wolf had just bought from Tasmania, into chunks, the red chili and large onions into shreds, and the garlic cloves into slices before throwing them into the wok for stir-frying.
When their flavorful smells rose up, Li Du whistled. Godzilla brought over the oyster meat that was being air-dried and said, “Still got water.”
Li Du responded, “It’s alright.”
After pouring a small plate of oyster meat into the wok, Li Du began stir-frying by moving the spatula speedily.
As Ah Meow, Ah Ow, and Crispy Noodles wandered greedily nearby, Li Du gave them some oyster meat.
Seeing this, Godzilla said, “Boss, they’re already full.”
Li Du asked, “How are they already full?”
“As we were prying open the oysters earlier, they kept stealing the oyster meat. They have eaten a lot of it.”
As such, Li Du ignored the three furry children and focused solely on cooking.
Baked oysters with garlic, baked oysters with chili oil, steamed oysters, scalded oysters, oysters with cheese, oysters glazed with chili oil, and stir-fried oysters. The last main dish also had oysters: fried egg pancakes with oysters.
Among the main dishes, the fried egg pancakes with oysters dish, which was like an egg pancake dish but with oysters added, was a specialty dish of his that he’d deliberately prepared.
The last few pieces of oyster egg pancake were ready. With the golden brown of the pancakes enhanced by the jade green of the small onions sprinkled over them and the added fragrance of lard, the fried egg pancakes with oysters were great in both color and smell.
After slogging away in the kitchen, Li Du finally finished preparing a table full of oyster dishes. Seeing them, Hans and the others raised their thumbs one after another. Following which, Hans asked, “Li, If I gave you a cart of cow dung, could you also make something great out of it?”
Li Du gave Hans a glare and said, “Could you not be so disgusting?”
Hans replied bitterly, “I am giving you my highest compliment.”
“When can we start eating?” Godzilla asked impatiently.
Li Du waved his hand and said, “Let’s eat!”
Besides being genuine wild oysters, the oysters lived in an area of the sea that was untouched by humans. As such, it meant that they were uncontaminated and, so long as the parasites were removed, were extremely clean delicacies.
Lu Guan told everyone that they should not eat too many oysters as doing so could easily cause diarrhea. As they were on a barren island that lacked healthcare services, having diarrhea could cost them their lives.
Brother Wolf shook his head. “Don’t worry. Eating raw oyster can easily cause diarrhea, but eating cooked oysters won’t cause diarrhea.”
Godzilla handed a bottle of hard liquor to Lu Guan. “Drink alcohol while you eat. By doing so, you won’t have diarrhea as alcohol kills bacteria.”
Li Du tore off a piece of oyster egg pancake. As the egg pancakes were still hot and the egg fragrance blended with the fresh delicious taste of the oysters, everyone became more hungry.
When the three furry children walked over after smelling the fragrance from the dishes, Li Du gave them a piece of egg pancake each. After seeing this sight, Brother Wolf said, “They have eaten quite a bit. Boss, they might get diarrhea.”
Li Du said, “Don’t worry, they know their own limitations.”
While they were feasting on the dishes, a helicopter flew toward them from a distance. Subsequently, after the helicopter found an empty spot on the island and landed, four people alighted from it.
The spot where the helicopter was at was rather far from Li Du and his group. After Hans, who was eating, raised a binocular to have a look, he exclaimed, “Are those officers from the Department of Fishing and Hunting? They actually flew here?”
Indeed, the people who had come over were officers from the Department of Fishing and Hunting.
Li Du temporarily stopped eating and took out his harvesting permit. “Those guys are really dedicated. Where did they come from? If they came from King Island, I will have to tip my hat to them.”
Even though such frequent checks by the officers from the Department of Fishing and Hunting were annoying and troublesome for Li Du, he still respected them and admired the attitude that they had toward their work.
Li Du drove to the shore in the speedboat and showed his harvesting permit to the officers.
An officer, who was the leader of the group, took a look at the permit and asked in a surprised manner, “You guys are harvesting black gold abalone here?”
Li Du replied, “Yeah, aren’t you guys here to check on us?”
The officer shook his head and replied, “Truth be told, no. We didn’t know that there were people harvesting black gold abalone here. We came over to install a leatherback sea turtle monitoring station.”
Leatherback sea turtles, which were huge, were the giants of sea turtles and played an important role in the ocean’s ecosystem.
After the second war world, humans dumped a huge amount of rubbish into the sea, which had a lot of plastic bags in them. As the plastic bags looked like jellyfish in the sea and leatherback sea turtles lived off of jellyfish, leatherback sea turtles would easily mistake the plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them.
Without the ability to digest or excrete the plastic bags, leatherback sea turtles usually ended up dying due to intestinal obstruction caused by the plastic bags adhering to their intestines.
The death of a large number of leatherback sea turtles had caught the eyes of environmentalists and marine industries from all over the world. In the last few years, Australia and New Zealand had been cooperating with each other to monitor the number of leatherback sea turtles crossing their borders.
The monitoring stations that the Department of Fishing and Hunting installed were made up of layers of long nets, a camera that was placed a short distance from the top net, and a solar-powered lamp, which gave out cold light, that was placed at the bottom of the nets.
Jellyfish attracted to light would be attracted to the lamp. As leatherback sea turtles fed on jellyfish, they would be attracted to the monitoring station and be recorded by the camera.
Lastly, through the use of a calculator, the approximate number of leatherback sea turtles that had passed through the border would be known.
Since Li Du and his group had nothing to do with this matter, they returned to the yacht to eat their meal.
An officer took down the number of the yacht’s satellite phone and told them that he would give them a call if there were any extreme weather changes on the sea, so as to allow them to take the necessary precautions when traveling on the sea.
Li Du was even more pleased with the sense of responsibility that officers from the Department of Fishing and Hunting had. When he returned to the yacht, he praised, “Who says Australians are boorish and have lazy civil servants? See, they are so outstanding!”
Hans shook his head. “Don’t be too sure of that. Rather, I feel that they did not take down our phone number with good intentions. Maybe it’s so that they can contact us and seek our assistance in doing work when they require help.”
“Using such a distasteful description for good people,” Li Du criticized Hans.
