Chapter 464 - 298: The Hidden Crisis Under the Sea

Chapter 464: Chapter 298: The Hidden Crisis Under the Sea

This was the path she’d chosen, and he couldn’t stop her. He turned and headed toward the sea.

He was used to walking in wet shoes and socks. Visibility was limited underwater, and without shoes, it was hard to avoid stepping on sharp rocks or shells.

To make it easier for Marcia, he deliberately chose a smoother path, doing his best to avoid the jagged, uneven areas.

Marcia wasn’t a fool. After noticing Lin Chen wasn’t leading her in a straight line but was meandering along the shore, she realized the path under her feet was much smoother than the ground on either side.

The realization warmed her heart, and she secretly added a few points to his score.

’Men from Great Xia are really all like this. They don’t talk much, but they get things done quietly. Their thoughtfulness is so much better than those Western men who just talk big.’

"See? This place is shellfish territory."

As he stepped into the water and approached a reef exposed above the surface, the ground beneath his feet was covered in a dense carpet of Green Mussels. Countless barnacles and abalone also clung to the rocks.

"Ah?"

Marcia jumped in surprise, only now realizing the pebble path beneath her feet had turned into a bed of Green Mussels at some point. She hadn’t noticed at all.

Lin Chen held two rocks he’d picked up. After giving them a quick rinse in the seawater, he took off his jacket, spread it on the reef, and bent down. He started tapping gently at the shellfish on the reef from an angle.

With these skilled taps, some of the larger Green Mussels quickly broke free from the reef.

He picked one up and saw it clearly. A single mussel was bigger than his palm and felt heavy in his hand.

Marcia copied his method, targeting only the largest Green Mussels. In no time, she had gathered seven or eight of the huge ones.

Seeing him pile the gathered shellfish on his jacket, she said nothing and added her own Green Mussels to the pile.

Lin Chen didn’t think anything of it and kept his head down, digging. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Marcia put down her shellfish, quickly take off her own jacket, and toss it down. She then moved the mussels she had collected onto it.

With her jacket off, the tight, high-collared sweater she wore underneath perfectly showcased the curves of a mature woman.

’If Erica was a tender bud just about to blossom, then Marcia was a flower in full bloom.’

’She had a different kind of aura than Erica; her every move was filled with the distinct air of a European woman.’

’He couldn’t quite put his finger on what that air was, but he could tell at a glance that she wasn’t from North America.’

He only spared a peripheral glance. As he looked up, he casually tossed a mussel onto his jacket and immediately went back to digging, hoping to avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings.

The two of them gathered a good thirty or so palm-sized Green Mussels and picked a few handfuls of barnacles. Marcia, who had never imagined barnacles were edible, was already dying of curiosity.

’It’s not often I get a vacation; I have to try everything I possibly can.’

"I don’t see any oysters around here. I’ll probably have to look for them on the seabed."

’I still have 14 points left over from Panama. Since I won’t be competing anymore, there’s no point saving them. I might even earn some more Happiness Points when I’m building the manor later.’

Wanting to make a good impression on Marcia, he unhesitatingly spent 10 points on a Complete Guide to Wild Shellfish.

A quick search in his new knowledge base told him why he couldn’t find any oysters here.

Oysters prefer to grow in low-salinity waters, like at the boundary of fresh and salt water or in the intertidal zone.

Simply put, to find oysters on the coast, you first need to find a river, then search near where its mouth empties into the sea.

The reason he’d been able to find them back in Panama was probably because two rivers flowed into the sea near the Mangrove Forest, diluting the local seawater’s salinity.

With this precise guidance, he quickly figured out where the oysters were likely to be.

The stream where they’d gotten water earlier!

Although Marcia could swim, she thought better of it and resisted the impulse to strip down in front of Lin Chen.

She was Erica’s mother, after all. Swimming in the sea in just her underwear in front of the man her daughter fancied was clearly going too far.

She wasn’t that crazy.

"I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to take these back and get some rest. My feet are burning."

Watching Marcia’s retreating figure as she carried the bundled-up jacket, Lin Chen secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He felt as if some shackle that had been binding him had instantly vanished without a trace.

He stripped off his shirt and pants, tossed them on the shore, and waded into the sea in just his underwear. He felt the chilly water creep up, first over his calves, then his stomach, his chest, and finally his neck.

He didn’t dive in right away, instead swimming a few laps on the surface to warm up before plunging headfirst into the sea.

The world beneath the waves was just as he’d imagined. A vast area ahead was filled with dense, upright kelp stalks, looking for all the world like a submerged forest.

The bull kelp stalks had a unique shape. They were as thick as an adult’s wrist and shaped like pipes. You could snap one by grabbing both ends and pulling hard.

Inside the thick walls of the stalk were long, hollow channels. It wasn’t just their appearance that resembled pipes; their structure was identical.

The only real difference was that the stalk walls were much thicker, unlike the thin walls of a man-made pipe.

It wasn’t deep here, only about ten meters.

He followed the bull kelp down to the seafloor. Faint sunlight shone on the sand and rocks, and as far as he could see, the bottom was carpeted with a dense mass of purple, black, red, and green sea urchins.

They occupied nearly every visible patch of the seabed. A good number of them had already encroached on the base of the bull kelp at the edge of the forest and were climbing them, greedily gnawing on the thick stalks.

There were so many sea urchins that calling it an infestation felt like an understatement.

He didn’t even dare to touch the seabed; he’d inevitably be jabbed by an urchin’s spines.

In just the four- or five-meter area directly below him, a rough count revealed at least fifty or sixty urchins, with Purple Sea Urchins being the most numerous.

The Purple Sea Urchin is the largest and most commercially valuable species on Canada’s west coast, beloved by consumers for its plump meat and fresh, sweet flavor.

The Green Sea Urchin shared similar characteristics, but it was far less numerous than the purple variety, making its commercial fishing value relatively low.

The third type was a particularly large red sea urchin. Its huge size made it highly ornamental, but it was far less edible than the other two, so hardly anyone bothered to harvest it for food.

Staring at the massive sea urchin colony, Lin Chen was dumbfounded. He hurriedly surfaced to catch his breath.

’No wonder that part of the research report was highlighted in red—the section explaining how the sea urchin population on Vancouver Island has been growing year after year due to a declining sea otter population and the recent sea star wasting disease, posing a fatal threat to the bull kelp forests.’

’At this scale, this kelp forest really won’t last much longer. It looks like I’ll have to make sea urchin a permanent fixture on the menu to help thin out their population.’

’The lack of natural predators was an easy problem to solve: just call in the chefs from Great Xia. He was actually a little worried about how long these sea urchins could hold out. Would they be eaten to the point of local extinction?’

’No, no, it probably wouldn’t come to that. A place this remote would have limited visitors. Besides, you can’t eat sea urchins year-round; they’re at their most delicious and plump in the cold of winter.’

It was already the end of March, and the sea urchins could start spawning any day now. Once they did, the plump roe would be released, leaving their shells empty.

Although he wasn’t an expert on echinoderms, as a chef who had done his research for the wilderness competition, he knew the basics.

’On second thought, by the time the manor is done and the restaurant is built—and who knew how long that would take, given the work pace of these foreigners—the sea urchins would definitely be out of season.’

’To put them on the menu, I’d have to wait until next winter, at least half a year away.’

He pushed those distant thoughts aside. The most pressing issue right now was figuring out how to get as many sea urchins as possible back to the shelter.

’My jacket is only so big, and it’s already full of giant Green Mussels. Unless I bring the urchins to shore one by one and smash off their spines with a rock... that’s the only way I could reduce their volume enough to carry more back.’

’Then again, this place wasn’t that far from the shelter. I could just call Erica over to help.’

’That girl probably didn’t want to be left alone at the shelter with her mom anyway.’

As he floated on the surface catching his breath, he saw Erica in the distance. Whether it was telepathy or he had simply read her mind, she was already walking slowly in his direction, clutching Marcia’s seawater-soaked jacket.

Her eyes lit up when she saw Lin Chen’s head break the surface, and she raised a hand to wave.

"How is it? Did you find anything?"

"It’s all sea urchins down there, at least a thousand of them!"

"That many??"

Erica couldn’t help but lick her lips at the thought of their sweet taste.

’She actually preferred sea urchin to crab or other shellfish. The best way was to use it as a sauce for other seafood, like snow crab legs or a big Lobster. Now *that* was the ultimate wilderness indulgence.’

’Green Mussels were just too common. You could find piles of them at any all-you-can-eat buffet. For North Americans and Europeans, eating them was like eating sunflower seeds—you got tired of them ages ago.’

’It was just like the ground beneath her feet right now—Green Mussels were so abundant they paved the ground, yet nobody bothered to gather them.’

"Do you want to help me handle the sea urchin spines, or would you rather go in that direction and dig up some big oysters? That’s what your mom... I mean, Marcia, specifically wanted to eat."

"I’m not going! I want to work on the sea urchins with you."

"She’d probably be even happier if she knew you were the one who dug up the oysters for her, don’t you think?"