I am a local in North America

Chapter 29 By the way, where's your bonus?

On the vast ocean, accurately locating migrating groups of king crabs relies mainly on experience and luck.

Professional crab fishing boats are expensive for a reason.

Su Jierui's "King's Landing" crab fishing boat is only 28 meters long. It's not a celebrity-style large crab fishing boat, but it's enough to carry two or three hundred crab traps.

It is equipped with a main winch and an auxiliary winch, plus two powerful hydraulic booms. This is the core equipment for crab fishing operations, which requires great strength to pull the heavy crab traps filled with crabs from the seabed hundreds of meters deep.

The high hull strength, which can withstand greater wind and waves, is only one aspect. The core instruments on board, namely the sonar, seabed profiler, and underwater camera, are all more advanced than those on ordinary fishing boats.

In addition, by combining GPS, nautical chart plotters, water temperature and salinity detectors, and other equipment, experienced crab fishing boat captains can analyze where there might be a large number of king crabs and understand whether the crab population on the seabed is suitable for fishing.

King crabs that are too small or have just molted are not worth catching; it would only be a waste of time and money.

While the profits from catching king crabs may seem enormous, the risks are actually quite high.

Some "gamblers" who work on crab fishing boats work hard for several years, spend a lot of money to rent other people's crab fishing boats and IFQ quotas, but when they can't find suitable crab groups to catch during the crab fishing season, they lose all their chips in one fell swoop and become poor overnight.

Of course, there are many examples of people who are lucky enough to win the gamble and are able to make a living from it for three years, eventually buying their own fishing boats or crab boats.

Last year, after his family had caught their maximum quota, they publicly revealed the location where they found the crabs. Whether Su's father was laughed at by other crab fishing boat captains is another matter, but the coordinates of a large number of king crabs caught are indeed very valuable.

Some experienced fishermen can even earn one or two hundred thousand US dollars by serving several crab fishing boats in a single crab fishing season, based on their own drawn nautical charts.

Even if you don't catch a lot of king crabs when you go out to sea, you still need to pay the crab fishermen on the boat a basic wage, plus expenses for fuel, bait, and so on.

Compared to the potentially huge profits, demanding $25000 for the precise coordinates of a king crab colony that was just caught yesterday is actually not too unreasonable.

Mr. Su looked conflicted and tentatively asked Mr. Su's mother:
“The owner of that ‘Giant Claw’ is Enrico Clark, who took advantage of the situation. But his crab fishing boat hauled over 10 tons yesterday, almost filling the hold. The king crabs were also of relatively high quality. Otherwise… should we spend some money to ask him?”

"Even if we earn a little less, it's better than not earning any money at all."

"The cold wave has passed, and the sea is calmer. Other crab fishing boats that haven't filled their quotas will go out to sea today. This year's total catch quota is only a little over 1700 tons, and less than 300 tons are left. I estimate that the total quota will be used up in less than a week."

“At the beginning of the month, because we were too confident, we rented 2.8 tons of quota from Uncle Zhang, which is nearly 6200 pounds. We lost $3 per pound in quota rental fees, which will cost us more than $18000.”

"I should have known better than to be so reckless. I didn't expect we wouldn't even have filled our own quota. This is a real headache..."

Grandma Zhuang looked pained, and rationally analyzed the situation, saying:

"Even if we spend this money, the crab swarm might not still be around there, right? We don't even know if the coordinates are real or fake. Even if we've been scammed, we won't be able to hold them accountable afterwards."

"Moreover, king crabs are alive, and they like to roam around the seabed in groups. If Captain Clark is willing to sign a contract guaranteeing that we can catch them, or refund our money, then spending this $25000 would be well worth it."

"But if there's no guarantee at all, we might as well go out and look for it ourselves. Otherwise, we've already lost money, and then we end up losing that extra $25000 intelligence fee—we'd be laughed at to death if word got out..."

This was also the key reason for Su's father's dilemma. While operating the machine to move the heavy crab trap, he said:
"Compared to other crab fishing boats, we have far too little experience. Uncle Zhang did give me a few places where crabs like to stay, but we didn't find any of them this time. Last time we went out to sea, it even delayed us by a whole day..."

Uncle Zhang is a friend of Grandpa Su Jierui. Starting from the crab fishing season in the 80s, the two of them went to the Alaskan waters together to explore.

One winter, Uncle Zhang went ashore early to sell king crabs. The local "crab bully" cut off his two ring fingers and little fingers, saying that he wanted to teach outsiders a lesson and not allow them to come and compete for resources.

It is said that the situation was quite complicated back then, and order was not restored until the introduction of the IFQ regulations in 1995.

Later, Uncle Zhang made some money by fishing and catching king crabs. Due to long-term drinking, he developed liver problems and moved to Los Angeles, where the climate is warm, to retire. He still maintains close contact with the Su family and treats them to a meal every time he returns to Seattle in recent years.

When begging for food in the ocean, nothing is absolutely secure.

In earlier years, it was common practice to raise salmon in marine cages along the coast of Washington State and the Canadian coast.

Mr. Su had acquaintances and friends who borrowed and took out loans to invest hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, thinking that with such a good sales volume and high price of salmon, he could make a fortune.

Unexpectedly, due to protests from environmental agencies and failure to pass environmental reviews, the marine cage fish farming industry was completely banned in both Canada and the United States, causing investors to suffer heavy losses.

Su Jierui had just arrived and didn't know the specifics yet, but listening to his parents' conversation, all he could think about was:

"Finding king crab colonies? That's my specialty!"

Last year, the reason why their family's Junlin crab fishing boat completed its fishing quota early and returned to the dock fully loaded with king crabs was largely due to him.

It's windy outside, let's go rest in the cabin first.

It was already dark, the cabin was lit, and the air was filled with the mixed smells of coffee and the salty sea breeze.

Suddenly remembering he hadn't had coffee in a long time, Su Jierui poured himself a small cup, mainly to satisfy his craving and taste it, not daring to drink too much for fear of affecting his sleep that night. At this moment, he interrupted his parents' conversation, saying:

"I found that I was quite lucky. Some contestants were so hungry that they questioned their existence, but I was able to catch fish almost every day during the competition. I ate fish all day long, and the fishy smell on my body never went away."

“My mom is right. Their fishing season is over this year, and they’ll be back next year. Even if we pay, they might not be willing to give us the actual coordinates of the crab colony. They might even be trying to rip us off because we’re newcomers.”

"I should just go and try it myself. Even if I don't catch anything this year, I can at least gain experience in chart drawing..."

Hearing what Su Jierui said.

Grandma Zhuang turned her attention back to her son, finally remembering something very important. Her eyes lit up, and she asked:

"By the way, what about your bonus? Has it been deposited into your bank account?"

“Children are easily led astray if they have money. Let me save it for you. Sports cars and watches are just consumables; it’s not worth spending too much money on them.”

"Don't worry, I'm your mother, I definitely won't touch your money. I already discussed it with your father last night, your money belongs to you alone, so that you three siblings won't have any trouble figuring it out in the future."

“I’ll help you save the money. Some financial products can earn four or five percent return every year, which is not bad.”

"...What child? I'm already 23!"

To avoid trouble, Su Jierui planned to act first and inform his parents later about buying the beaver ranch, adding that he didn't want to tell them about his plans yet.

"No one was working during the holiday, so I haven't received my bonus yet. I'll talk about it after I get it."

Grandma Zhuang sensed his reluctance and continued to remind him:

"Do you remember Aunt Sun, who used to play mahjong with me all the time?"

"Her son graduated from Stanford University, but he still followed others and speculated in cryptocurrencies. He finally saved up more than 100,000 US dollars by working, but lost it all overnight. He even sold the car that your Aunt Sun helped him buy to raise money to continue speculating in cryptocurrencies. I don't know how much he lost."

"There's also Aunt Susan, who runs a dance class. This summer, she received a call from Indian customer service saying that the IRS was investigating her accounts and that she might have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines. They told her to transfer the money to an official account, and she was scammed out of her pension of over 100,000 dollars."

"If you ask me, why don't you just use your bonus to buy a house? After you graduate, get married, and start working, you'll need a place to live, or you can continue living with us. Renting out your house and earning some rent can help save on your daily expenses..."

Su Jerry thought to himself, "The beaver ranch counts as real estate, right?" and simply nodded in reply:

"Okay, then I'll look at houses first. I haven't received the bonus yet, and I haven't figured out how much tax I need to pay. It's a bit too early to think about these things."

On Su Jierui's grandparents' side, Su Zhenhai is their only son.

On his maternal grandparents' side, there is also an aunt who is 14 years younger than Zhuang's mother, and the whole family lives in the Seattle area.

Mr. Su originally wanted to pay off the loan for the Junlin crab fishing boat as soon as possible to avoid paying high loan interest every year and bearing considerable pressure.

However, after thinking it over, he didn't think about his son's bonus. After all, there are three children in the family, and it's difficult to treat them all equally.

I've seen far too many examples of siblings turning against each other and never speaking to each other again, often because the parents didn't handle things well. But when it comes to a prize of millions of dollars, you have to be careful.

Mr. Su felt that since the money was earned by his son, it should belong to Su Jerry himself, and it was best not to interfere. The couple had reached a consensus on this matter last night.

So, Mr. Su only offered his suggestion:
“At the time, a company wanted to buy your grandfather’s IFQ shares for $130 million. When your grandfather discussed it with us, we all felt that there was no need to sell them.”

"We're suffering losses now. This year, the king crab harvest here has decreased, and the total catch share released is about 20% less than last year. The crab fishing boats are making less money, but the price of king crabs hasn't increased. It's hard to say whether a 1% IFQ share can still sell for $100 million."

"I think we should go find Uncle Zhang and ask him if he'd sell his 1% IFQ quota. He's been divorced three times and has no children; he might be willing to cash in. What if there's a bumper king crab harvest next year and the value of these quotas goes up again?"

Old Mrs. Zhuang complained that he was giving out random advice, and quickly interrupted him:
"We're going to lose a lot of money this year. We can't even fill our own quota, and now we have to spend so much money to buy more fishing quotas from Uncle Zhang?"

"Nobody knows what the future holds. Global oceans are warming, and glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic are melting. What if king crab production continues to decline, and these IFQ quotas become completely worthless? I've heard that there are also a lot of king crabs in Europe and Russia. We can't put all our family's money into them."

"Buying a house is still the better option. Seattle is a very livable city, and prices have been rising steadily over the years, so there's no worry about finding tenants. It would be best if it were closer to home, so that when you get married and have children, it will be convenient for me to occasionally visit and help take care of your grandchildren when I'm not busy..."

"Isn't that thinking too far ahead? I'm still studying, why are they all starting to pressure me to get married and have children? They haven't seen me for months, can't they at least start talking about something cheerful?"

After Su Jierui finished speaking, his expression was a little melancholy.

Suddenly, I realized that living alone in the wilderness doesn't seem so bad.

……

(End of this chapter)