Tide Hunting: I Dive into the Sea to Save Someone and Awaken Tide-Sensing Powers from the Start

Twelve years ago, his father, Chen Haisheng, went out to sea and never returned. All he left behind was an empty boat and a sea snail shell worn smooth by time.

Twelve years later, on a typhoon-lashed night, twenty-two-year-old Chen Chaoshen jumped into the sea to save someone and nearly drowned himself. When he woke after three days in a coma, he heard something new in his left ear.

He could hear the muffled rush of schools of fish moving underwater, crabs digging through the mud beneath the tidal flats, and the sea’s low, ominous growl before a storm.

Other people relied on luck when harvesting the shore. He relied on hearing.

He could pinpoint rich, buttery crabs buried three feet beneath the tidal flats by sound; locate schools of large yellow croaker hundreds of meters down in the open sea from five nautical miles away; and know which way a typhoon was headed two days before the meteorological bureau.

One buttery crab: 8,000 yuan.

One net of large yellow croaker: 280,000 yuan.

One 600-jin bluefin tuna: 1.2 million yuan at auction.

From the tidal flats to coastal waters, from the open sea to the distant ocean; from a small sampan to a fleet of steel ocean-going ships; from 30,000 yuan in debt to a fortune worth hundreds of millions.

But he never forgot what his father had said: Cherish what the sea gives you. Don’t force what it doesn’t.

A string of numbers was hidden inside the shell, and his father had circled a place called the Old Sea Eye on his chart. Deep in the open sea lay a blue hole with water dark as ink. His father had vanished there twelve years ago. Now, twelve years later, Chen Chaoshen was going to find the answer.

This is the story of a man who makes his living harvesting the sea.