Salmon, commonly known as "sanwen fish" in Chinese, currently has a well-established aquaculture technology, and the market demand for it is enormous.
Primarily, domestic fish farmers and aquaculture companies have collaborated to drive down prices, making it more affordable for the general public.
In addition, the Great Xia nation still imports tens of thousands of tons of salmon annually.
Domestic consumption of salmon exceeds 200,000 tons per year and continues to rise.
Due to the discharge of nuclear sewage by the small island nation to the east, seafood has become unsafe to eat, leading the public to shift their focus to this more affordable aquatic product.
Salmon can thrive in both freshwater and seawater.
Coupled with its excellent meat quality and texture, it serves as a viable substitute for seafood. While seafood prices have dropped, freshwater and farmed seafood products have not.
Instead, their prices have risen significantly.
Therefore, Li Dong is certain to profit from this venture.
After processing in factories and canning, the product can remain edible for decades—its strategic value in an apocalyptic scenario is immeasurable.
At the very least, it spares people from having to consume protein starch blocks made from cockroaches or mealworms.
This is a luxury.
A single salmon can produce around 4,000 eggs.
Li Dong had just witnessed several employees extracting and fertilizing salmon eggs.
After collecting and fertilizing the fish eggs, the employees transported them to the hatchery.
The salmon hatchery contains numerous small tanks designed for independent incubation.
These small tanks simulate the river environment where salmon eggs naturally hatch.
Because this is a controlled environment, the eggs are not preyed upon by natural predators, resulting in a high hatching success rate.
Even with high success rates, some bad eggs still appear.
During incubation, employees use chopsticks to remove the white, spoiled eggs to prevent them from affecting the healthy ones.
After three days of incubation, the eyes of the tiny salmon inside the eggs become clearly visible.
At this stage, the eggs must remain in the simulated river tanks for a few more days.
After another three to four days of incubation, the hatched fish fry still carry a yolk sac, which provides all the nutrients they need for the first couple of days of development.
The incubation time largely depends on water temperature. Once the yolk sac is fully absorbed, the salmon fry can be transferred from the small tanks to larger ones for rearing.
Thousands of tiny fish can then feed on external nutrients in these larger tanks.
Before reaching adulthood, employees distribute feed in varying proportions according to the salmon's growth cycle, with each batch of feed carefully weighed and calculated.
The amount of feed allocated depends on the size of the salmon in each tank.
Employees load the measured feed into feeding devices, utilizing an intelligent feeding system for distribution.
This method is more efficient and precise than manual feeding, ensuring optimal feed allocation.
Adult salmon are transferred to even larger rearing ponds and fed a different type of feed.
After observing the entire process, Li Dong was deeply moved—this work could never be accomplished by a single person or an automated system alone.
After all, intelligent systems are still inanimate objects and require engineers and technical workers to operate them.
Moreover, the Breeding and Reproduction Center doesn't have many intelligent machines—most tasks still require manual labor.
The entire salmon hatchery contains three hundred small tanks.
At least five employees are needed to operate them.
Each small tank can hatch about four thousand fry, so three hundred tanks can produce roughly 1.2 million fish fry.
This number is far less than that of grass carp, but it's still substantial.
After all, fish like grass carp, which can produce hundreds of thousands of eggs in a single spawning, are unnaturally prolific when artificially bred.
The reason the "Four Major Domesticated Fish" are called domesticated fish and can be farmed on a large scale is simply because they produce vast quantities of eggs and are easy to raise.
Thus, in aquaculture farms, these four species are the most numerous and the least troublesome.
The techniques for farming them are the most mature—even rural farmers can do it.
After observing the salmon hatching process and the hatchery, Li Dong went to see how other fish species were hatched and what their hatcheries looked like.
However, the hatching process varies for each species, and the required techniques differ as well.
After watching a few more times, Li Dong lost interest.
Next, he went to the third floor to check out the laying hen hatching workshop. The entire process here was no different from what he had seen in documentaries on video platforms.
It was almost fully automated.
No—it was intelligently fully automated.
Very few workers were needed, but maintaining such a large hatchery still required at least a dozen people.
Operational engineers, maintenance engineers, and others were also necessary.
If equipment malfunctioned or errors occurred, relevant technicians would be immediately notified for repairs and restoration.
All the hatcheries on the third floor were dedicated to poultry eggs, though the majority of the space was occupied by hatcheries for chickens, ducks, and geese.
The fourth-floor hatcheries were mainly used for breeding freshwater and marine shrimp and crabs, with some also designated for fish hatching.
After all, the entire Breeding and Reproduction Center housed 113 fish species—the second-floor hatcheries alone couldn't accommodate them all.
From the fifth to the seventh floor, the focus shifted to livestock reproduction.
For example, selected breeding pigs and sows were allowed to mate naturally.
The same applied to cattle, horses, sheep, rabbits, donkeys, mules, and other livestock.
This was called selective breeding and cultivation.
All the livestock Li Dong purchased for breeding were female stock—untouched by genetic screening or hybridization—belonging to the finest batch from natural breeding.
They could reproduce stably across generations without genetic degradation.
In contrast, sows bought from large corporations might not be as reliable.
After one generation, self-breeding for two or three more could lead to genetic degradation or even hereditary diseases, rendering vaccines useless.
To prevent this, Li Dong specifically hired experts and scholars to oversee the breeding of the next generation of livestock in his farming base.
However, obtaining high-quality female stock from major livestock corporations wasn't easy—no amount of money or connections could guarantee it.
These breeding stocks were critical to the survival of a livestock company or conglomerate—how could outsiders easily acquire them?
Besides, the security departments of these companies weren't just for show.
Most major corporations' security departments are equipped with firearms.
Li Dong had also applied for firearm authorization for Great Qin Heavy Industries Technology Company's five-hundred-member security team, and the application was approved.
After inspecting the third floor, Li Dong proceeded to the Hatchery on the fourth floor.
By the time he finished checking the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors, it was already past six in the evening.
Outside, the sky had turned completely dark.
Yet the entire Shelter Base remained brightly lit as if it were daytime.
Countless construction vehicles were still operating at the worksite.
As Li Dong stepped out of the Breeding and Reproduction Center Building's main entrance, he looked into the distance where a tall tower seemed to be rising from the ground.
It was the Watchtower.
Originally designed to stand six hundred meters tall, this Watchtower was built to withstand at least magnitude-8 earthquakes.
It would be the tallest structure in the base—without exception.
Its design somewhat resembled Far Star Union's KVLV Television Tower, yet with distinct differences given their completely different functions and purposes.
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