Article by Chen Shuying, Jiang Weiquan, and Liu Dengcheng

This article is provided by the Taiwan Digital Archives Request-for-Proposals Project, the subsidiary project of Taiwan Digital Archives Expansion Project

 

 

The Qingming Festival marks the advent of the season for Common dolphinfish (_^Coryphaena hippurus_^), when fishermen in Taiwan become excited and prepared to welcome their first great harvest of the year.

 

Fish market with loads of common dolphinfish for sale, beaming a golden shade.

 

Before the Chinese Lunar New Year, Chenggong fish market looks like a checkerboard filled with seas of marlins on each square. After the New Year, however, the marlins are replaced by mountains of golden-colored common dolphinfish. Attached on top of each mountain of fish is a piece of paper with the net weight of the pile beneath it. Moving through the fish market at this time of the year requires exceptional agility, for you need not only to navigate through the mountains of fish to make your way, but to look out for sudden 'attacks' from the fish flipping and flopping on top of these piles. Crisscrossing our way through the fish market, we couldn't help but feel amazed at the ever-growing height of the piles of common dolphinfish. 

 

We might have set off for Chenggong fish market as 'researchers' who were collecting fish samples for the TELDAP project. However, we were no different from tourists most of the time, wondering naively about what life on the ocean looks like. As our imaginations ran wild, questions about the life of a fisherman bloomed: what is the day of a fisherman on the ocean like? How do they carry out their work? We could not stop thinking about the nostalgic fishermen on the sea and their worried wives waiting at shore. 

 

The piles after piles of golden harvest were so intriguing that we were prompted to approach some fishermen and raise our questions. "Excuse me, we were just wondering: where have the marlins and sharks gone? What type of fish are these? How did you catch this kind of fish?" Though occupied with unloading their catch, these fishermen, with a discernible Taiwanese accent, shared with us the story of the season of golden harvest exclusive to the sea of the eastern coast of Taiwan. The conversation with them was most pleasant, and allowed us to get a glimpse into the dazzling life on the vast ocean. 

 

Kuroshio Current, or the Black Stream, travels through the waters of the eastern coast of Taiwan. It brings along a large amount of fish and creates a large fishing ground of different types of migratory fish for the fishery industry in eastern Taiwan. Every season is marked by a different species of fish. For example, marlins travel along the current to eastern Taiwan right before the time of Chinese Lunar New Year. This is also why they have become a symbol of a happy Chinese Lunar New Year for many fishermen. After the Lunar New Year, harpoon decks are removed from the fishing boats and replaced by baskets of long-line fishing equipment. Between the time of the Qingming Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival, common dolphinfish ride on the Kuroshio to eastern Taiwan. A huge harvest of common dolphinfish would be an auspicious start to the year, and could rid a fisherman's family of financial distress. Therefore, no seafarer would give up this opportunity to chase after the golden hoards.

 

Fishermen in Taiwan mainly use long-line fishing (known as pàng-kùn in Taiwanese) to capture common dolphinfish. The process of setting up the long-line system and harvest is called 'tsi̍t-lo̍h kùn', which involves throwing the hook into the water, merging the line into the water, throwing the buoy, retrieving the lines, and retrieving the hooks. It usually takes a team of fishermen one and a half hours to set up four hundred hooks of long-line system. A fishing boat usually carries six to eight baskets of long-line fishing hooks and lines for a day's fishing. Each basket contains roughly two hundred hooks. Live milkfish, frozen Pacific saury, and squid are often used as bait.

 

The next question is: where do you find a catch of fish on the vast, wide ocean? The well-tested wisdom of fishing boat captains has proved to be a lot more useful than advanced technology in spotting fish. Years of experience have taught them how to find the best location by observing the flow of water and the scent in the wind. To gain an advantage in location, captains always sail off early to 'pâi-bán', or to occupy the best spot before everyone else gets there. If you drive through the eastern coast of Taiwan during the common dolphinfish season, you cannot miss the rows of lights beaming on the ocean. These are the lights of fishing boats that are waiting at their preferred location to drop the hooks. Those of us who are ignorant about life on the sea have little clue about what these lights represent for the fishermen and their families. For them, the beaming lights on the sea are not just seasonal scenery, but the hope of a year of good fortune and prosperity. 

 

Under the hue of the setting sun, fishermen quickly finish their dinner on the boats before arriving at their chosen locations. The preparation of long-line equipment starts as soon as the boat is parked on the sea. Imagine: surrounded by nothing but darkness and the stars in the sky, these fishermen can hear everything clearly - the wheezing wind, the roaring boat engine, and the slapping waves. However, the only music to their ears, on this dark and vast horizon, is the sound of their knives chopping the bait, filling their hearts with excitement. 

 

 

 

The fish harvest is brought to the deck before being unloaded to the shore for weighing.

 

 

Finally, the coming of twilight at four a.m. signals the start of long-line fishing. To ensure a smooth operation, each boat needs to keep a distance of at least two nautical miles (or 3.7 kilometers) from each other. Each boat also needs to throw out its bait and fishing lines faster than the boats traveling behind it so that the fishing lines do not get entangled. The bait needs to be thrown out one-by-one manually as the boat travels. Therefore, the speed of the boat must be in sync with the tempo of throwing out the bait. If the boat accelerates too much, the fishing lines will be stretched out by the current. The fishermen then need to speed up throwing out the bait before the hooks are pulled out by the current, or else the hooks could cut the fishermen’s hands. Even if your hands are bloody, the fishermen told us, you can do nothing but try to speed up throwing out the hooks in your hands. It would be futile to shout at the captain in the hope that he would slow down, because your voice would only drown in the engines' thundering sound. You must throw out your hooks quickly, or else you end up having a mess of entangled fishing lines and more cuts and injuries on your clumsy hands. 

 

The fishing lines are arranged vertically to the flow of the sea current. On average, the fishing boat needs to sail over twenty nautical miles to release all six baskets of hooks. The fishermen would wait a while after releasing all the hooks before retrieving the hooks. It is indeed a sight to behold! Common dolphinfish are swung out of the water into the boats one after another, flipping about energetically on the decks with their mesmerizingly golden bodies. The fish will not surrender without a fight. Year after year, these fishermen battle with these common dolphinfish, who struggle for survival. In good times, 'tsi̍t-lo̍h kùn' can bring in common dolphinfish in the thousand kilograms, which is as few as two or three people are responsible to finish processing by washing them with icy water before stocking them into the storage cabins until they are full. It is easy to see how challenging this job is physically! The fishermen's dark tan and calloused hands are all testimonies to the enormous effort it takes to harvest common dolphinfish.

 

Fishing boats operate on two different schedules when it comes to common dolphinfish harvesting. Fishing boats that depart and return on the same day are called 'hiān-lâu-á' in Taiwanese. These boats usually depart from Chenggong Township and sail northward to Changbin or southward to Fugang. Since the catch is captured and auctioned on the same day, it is usually more expensive than the ones captured by boats that catch fish for at least five to seven days consecutively before heading back to shore. The difference in the sales price can amount to a couple of dollars. The five-to seven-day catching schedule allows the fishing boats to cover a wider range of waters, including those around Green Island, Orchid Island (Lanyu), and Dawu Township, without compromising the freshness of the catch. 

 

 

The bidding of common dolphinfish, hosted by an auctioneer.

 

Unloaded fish are classified in three categories according to size and weight. Fish that weigh over 5 kg are classified as ‘tuā-bān’, 3-5 kg as ‘tiong-bān’, and under 3 kg as ‘sió-bān’. Since the fish are always auctioned, the categorizations dictate the different starting price of the fish. If you take Chenggong Fishing Harbor as an example, auctions of common dolphinfish take place every afternoon during the season. Buyers gather round and behold the piles and piles of common dolphinfish. On each fish pile, there is a piece of paper showing the name of the boat and the weight of the fish underneath it. This piece of paper is just like a medal that honors the fishermen with their achievements. When the bidding starts, the captains' hearts race with anticipation. They listen to the bidders in the crowd yell out the price they are willing to pay for, say, a pile of ‘tuā-bān’: 75 cents, 76.5 cents, 80 cents, and up. A cent of difference may seem minimal, but it can amount to a lot when it comes to the fishermen's total income. Moreover, a higher price is also a sign of the buyers' confidence and trust in the fishing crew's professionalism in maintaining the freshness of the harvest.

 

If you have ever come to Chenggong Fishing Harbor in eastern Taiwan, you cannot miss the women and children waiting in anticipation at the harbor's security check point, casting their eyes afar on the sea. They can tell whether their husbands’ or fathers' boats are fully-loaded only by looking at the waterlines. Crew members on a boat with a deep waterline will always jump off the boat in ecstasy, with a big smile on their faces. They simply cannot wait to secure the boat and tell everybody their stories of success. Listening to their almost heroic performance in spotting the right time and the right location, we feel that even the setting sun is shining with joy and excitement.  

 

Serving on the research team of the TELDAP Project of the Kuroshio Fishing Culture of Eastern Taiwan, we had to visit the Chenggong fish market everyday to collect fish samples and make specimens. The immersion in this environment made us realize that a fish market is not just about selling fish. It is also about the fishermen, who sweat profusely everyday, unloading their harvest to keep the market busy and bustling. And we certainly cannot forget the various other players that keep the fish market so vibrant: the fish buyers who examine the harvest and silently calculate their bidding strategies, the 'thiò-tshiú' (auctioneers) who oversee the auctions, the women who help unload the harvest, and the tourists who are preoccupied with capturing everything they see in this busy market with their professional cameras. As these various figures passed us by, we realized that what we needed to archive was not only the fishing practice, but also the lifestyles of those people whose lives evolved and progressed along with the Kuroshio. It is those stories and the fishing culture behind the fruitful catch that this digital archiving project must preserve and treasure. 

 

 

 

 

 

Pompano Dolphinfish (_^Coryphaena equiselis_^)

Subject and Keywords: Kingdom: Animalia

Description: Harvesting method: Long-line fishing

Data Identifier: Collection code: FRIP22800