Wading to catch conch

Mrs. Hai, 65 years old, from Tam Quang commune, Nui Thanh district, has been working with snails for more than 40 years. In the past, she took it home to wash it, then boil it or break the shell to get the intestines to bring to the market to sell rice. For more than 15 years now, tourists come to the east beach, conch has become a specialty, so it is sold at a high price.

This snail has a thick, blue shell with white, blue, and black stripes running along spiral veins. The mouth has hard lumps, blue-gray, white, yellow-orange.

Bai Rang beach has white sand, clear blue water with many wild rapids. Every month from the 1st to the 5th and the 10th to the 16th day of the lunar calendar, the tides are low, revealing a strip of rocks and corals along the shore more than a kilometer long. This place has a variety of sea snails, including conch.

In the late afternoon of the first day of June, Mrs. Hai put on plastic socks and slippers, waded with the packaging in her hand, wading down to the knee-deepest place, looking around for conch. Discovering a snail bigger than a thumb’s knuckle clinging to a rock crevice, she used her hand to pick it up and put it in a bag.

“This kind of flood catches the most snails because it’s easy to see, but when it’s deep, it’s very hard to get down,” she explained. At dusk, Mrs. Hai left. On the way back, she stopped at a restaurant along the beach that sold three kilograms of snails for 45,000 VND/kg. On rainy days, snails come out a lot, Ms. Hai can catch nearly 10 kg.

Mrs. Hanh, 50 years old, in Tam Quang commune, catches snails again at dusk. The sea level has not yet risen, she uses a flashlight on her head to look at the snails. At 8 pm, the water flooded the rocky beach, she finished the work with the result of 5 kg of snails, earning nearly 250,000 VND.

Catching conch does not have to invest much, each person only buys thick socks and slippers to avoid being stabbed by sharp objects. However, due to frequent contact with water, his hands were white and bleeding by the coral.

“If you catch snails, you have to bend over, so your back is often tired. If you want to catch a lot, you must have good health and good eyesight,” said Ms. Hanh. Many snails lay in the rock and coral nooks, she poked them out with an iron rod. Every time the water dries up, nearly 100 people come to catch snails along the beach.

Ms. Van, the owner of a seafood restaurant on Bai Rang beach, said that every day people catch as much as they can buy. Conch bought, washed and raised, mainly boiled with ginger sauce or grilled.

Conch, also known as conch, moon, pearl eye has the scientific name Turbinidae. Snails often live alone on rocks, corals, eat seaweed species.

Son Thuy