‘Extreme Job’ A delicacy of the mudflats and the sea! Octopus and Red Crab will be broadcast on EBS1TV at 8:55 pm on Saturday, October 26th.
Autumn has come to us with the weather getting colder. Some people are busy harvesting food in season. From people crossing the mudflats with their bare hands to collect octopus, the king hidden in the mudflats, to people fighting against strong waves and sea breezes to catch red crab, the red treasure of the sea! This fall, we meet people who are fighting desperately to get octopus and red crab.
An octopus hunter catches the tidal flat’s delicacy, octopus, with his bare hands!
This summer, due to the prolonged heatwave, octopuses disappeared and are called ‘golden octopuses’, and people gather to catch this precious treasure. Among the people carrying all kinds of equipment, there is one worker who catches octopuses with only his bare hands and without any tools. He, who has been catching octopuses for about 50 years, has been catching octopuses with his bare hands without any tools since he first learned, and with his expert work skills, he is said to be able to catch more octopuses in a short period of time than people with tools.
First, look for the octopus’ pores from the land, scoop out the mudflats and water along the path of the hole, and when it reaches a certain level, make a lump with the mudflats and block the octopus’ holes with a convex shape. And if you mark the mud flat like a tombstone, the preliminary work called ‘grave octopus’ work is completed. The work is repeated for 3 to 4 hours while walking on soft pearls, and when the burial work is completed, the work returns to the ‘grave octopus’ that was made in the beginning. Now the work begins in earnest. Quickly turn over the chunk of pearl blocking the pores, put your hand in, and pull out the octopus. However, it is easy to make a mistake! Putting my regrets aside, I move around without stopping until the water fills up, quickly inserting my hand into the buried octopus hole and repeatedly pulling it out. They say that if you do it like that, your whole body will become covered in pearls before you know it.
Catching octopuses with bare hands is an arduous and lonely task, so they are now increasingly called the last generation, but today, let’s meet the people who sacrifice their whole bodies to catch tidal flat octopuses for their families.
An endless battle with an 11,000m fish trap! Red crab fishing
As the weather gets cooler, red crabs gain weight and become more popular. Red crab, also known as the red treasure of the East Coast, usually lives in mud or soft sandy bottoms at depths of 700 to 1,500 meters, so it must be caught using large traps.
At 3 a.m., rubbing sleepy eyes, we set sail with an 89-ton boat to catch red crab. It took 5 hours to arrive at the fishing site, braving the sea breeze. Fighting against the waves on a rocking boat, they capture traps about 11,000 meters long one by one. If you repeatedly lift and lower a fish trap the size of an adult’s body and weigh more than 10 kg, the strength in your arms and legs will be lost due to the enormous weight, but when you see the red gem falling from the water inside every time you lift the fish trap, the sailors will feel relieved from the fatigue. It seems like they forgot. But there is no time to rest for a moment. To maintain the freshness of these red crabs, they must be quickly selected, bait replaced in each of the 320 traps, and then casted again. After returning from a dangerous journey of 3 days and 2 nights, you have to unload at the port for another 3 hours.
Let’s go to the hot spot to meet people who overcome strong waves to catch red crabs to achieve their dream of catching a full boat.
Economy Queen Reporter Park Yu-mi Photo EBS Extreme Job
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