The boat was empty. Apart from the basic tools they regularly used, there was nothing aboard-no catch and no people.
Clearly, they had not come out to fish.
"You didn't see anything, did you? There's nothing strange on the boat either. Look how curious you are. Just leave them alone. Why do you keep wondering what they're doing on the island? We just need to steer clear of them."
"I'm thinking about how we'll be catching squid soon. If they come to the island every day, how are we supposed to catch any? Wouldn't we just be doing all the work for them, only for them to take the whole lot?"
"That's true..."
Father Ye frowned in concern too. He had almost forgotten about that.
"If we have to find another island, it really won't be easy. We'll have to head farther out to sea."
Small wooden boats were everywhere along the coast. If they looked for another spot, they could only go farther out, but finding a suitable isolated island farther out would not be easy either.
Besides, the squid fishing season during that particular period was unique to their area, just as the jellyfish season occurred around the Fujian-Zhejiang border and the season for catching shrimp to dry occurred around Zhoushan.
Some fishing boats that failed to find a suitable spot simply used trawl nets, though few caught them that way. If they searched carefully, they could always find somewhere. The main reason was that there were still few trawlers around in those days.
A dozen or so years later, when trawlers became more numerous, the squid gradually stopped gathering in sufficient numbers for a fishing season. They could only be caught by trawling, rather than scooped up as easily as they were now.
"We just don't know