Siberian fishermen use natural ice cellars to refrigerate their catches and make high profits on the market
In the absence of a power supply, it can also maintain a temperature of -12, with a maximum capacity of more than 10,000 tons, and it can also work continuously for more than 100 years without any problems.
This environmentally friendly "ice store" is located in the south-central part of the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia, Russia, before the establishment of the Soviet Union, more than 20 offshore oil fields were discovered in the Kara Sea, including four in the Yamal Peninsula, these are cheap, low extraction difficulty, convenient water and land transportation of large oil fields, in order to facilitate transportation, it is necessary to build a new type of deep-water port, can dock more giant oil tankers, this is the origin of the Port of Novi.
The Port of Novi was not just an ordinary oil port, the Soviets also used the Kara Sea to occupy the Barents Sea deeply, establishing outposts, supply depots and settlements there, eventually forming a town with more than 5,000 inhabitants at its peak, most of whom were miners and their families.
Because of its location in the Arctic Circle, the Port of Novi is frozen all year round, making oil extraction more difficult even in winter, a problem that was not alleviated until a group of fishermen arrived.
Siberian fishermen have a Xi of digging up ice and burying fish, building a house on the coast, bringing back the catch and selling it on the spot, burying the rest under the coordinate hut. With the establishment of the port of Novi and the opening of the port of Novi more fishermen docked their boats here, it became the closest fishing factory to the North Pole and the nearest Victoria port.
Every winter before it melts, the fishermen dig out the ice and store it in the ice storage under the coordinate hut, and each family will have a refrigerator of thirty or forty square meters to store more than a thousand kilograms of fish, enough to survive the winter safely. However, the fishery processing plant says that it is still far from it, after all, the fishery production here is very high, and the number of fish processed is more than 10,000 tons a year, and those scattered, small fishing grounds are obviously not enough. Therefore, building a large-scale cold storage that saves energy and energy has become a problem in front of him.
At the suggestion of a fisherman, the Soviet authorities sent prisoners from Siberia to Port Novi in an attempt to dig a huge two-story basement under the permafrost, on which the grain and vegetables needed by the employees of the oil company were stored, while the bottom floor was provided to the fishermen free of charge. It lasted two years, and one was 1The "natural refrigerator" with 6km and more than 200 side openings came into being, covering an area of about 7,000 square meters and a maximum water storage capacity of 12,000 tons.
According to Soviet researchers' calculations, the minimum temperature at the bottom of the natural cold storage can be maintained at minus 12 degrees Celsius, which can be used to store fish and meat, while the temperature on the top floor is between -2 degrees Celsius and 1 degree Celsius, which allows vegetables and food not to rot for a short time, and in winter, the cold storage has no effect, because the temperature in the Arctic is too low, and the surrounding area has become an outdoor freezer.
On the recommendation of a Russian friend, I interviewed a fisherman named Achilev, a famous "wild guide" in Port Novi, who spent more than 200 days alone in the Arctic Circle. "You're Inuit, aren't you?”
Achillev smiled bitterly: "Inuit doesn't love this place, there are many foreign populations, but most of the reindeer are bred by Inuit, more than forty years ago, some fishermen were idle in winter, so they left the reindeer at home, and slowly, they took the reindeer as their own food."
Siberian fishermen need reindeer in winter, they are not suitable for long-distance transportation, and reindeer are more obedient and powerful than dogs.
Novi Port is actually not a port, when the United States and the Soviet Union were not finished, most Siberian fishermen would transport fishing boats to some Nordic countries for sale, but with the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, after the naval blockade, these fishing boats want to be transported to Europe and the United States, they have to go through various checkpoints by land and sea.
Achilev's whole family were fishermen, a total of more than a hundred people, a total of thirteen boats, everyone went out to fish in the summer, and hid at home in the winter to survive the winter, and life was not bad.
Every November, before the port closes (winter), the fishermen fill their boats as much as they can, and then sort the fish and sell them separately, waiting for buyers, while the fish in general needs to be transported to nearby cities or stored in underground fish storage, because there is neither electricity nor overheads, and anyone can enter.
Because the distance was too far, they had to divide into more than a dozen groups, each of which had its own leader to arrange, and Achilev, as a person who had the experience of surviving in the wilderness, was placed in the farthest and most difficult place in Salekhard, and ** higher.
Achilev's brother and two brothers-in-law followed, and they sent their son to the suburbs, where they watched as they faded away.
Achlev's brother-in-law told me that he had served in the Russian Arctic Combat Forces for seven years, had served as a soldier in Murmansk in his early years, and then was transferred to work there, and as his expenses increased, he went fishing with Achlev. That's when I discovered that in the small towns around Port Novi, I could only work seven months a year, and the other five months were free. In his opinion, the job is tiring, but making money is very simple, and he can get 30,000 rubles at a time, which is worth a month's salary in the local area.
Located in the Tyumen region of the Russian Federation, Salekhard is a timber-based transit point with just over 30,000 inhabitants, but there are also many caravans trading here. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it gradually turned into an industrialized city, and now it has grown to the largest industrial region in northern Siberia, with canned fish, wood processing factories and production bases for auto parts.
When Achilev and the others arrived in the city, they went directly to the aquatic market and set up a stall, and before the last market of winter had passed, they had to go out of the fish at a very low price, and then give the fish canning companies at a lower price.
Compared with the Yakutsk fish market, the Salekhard fish market is not large, but the variety is rich, ** low, tens of thousands of residents living around the town also know that Arctic fish (containing more than 50% of the fatty meat, essential in winter), the price is 80 rubles (about 4 yuan a catty), the most common is the Arctic pike, the normal weight is 10kg, and the price is 350 rubles (full strip) after removing the head and tail.
Walking around the aquarium market made of simple shacks, most of the stalls were filled with women, and after asking Achilev I learned that it was difficult for women in Siberia to find regular work, most of the work was manual work, and women were more vulnerable, so they had to do some simple or seasonal work.
Although the stalls are not physically demanding, the resistance to the cold is unimaginable to ordinary people, the temperature has dropped to minus 29 degrees that day, and the fish in the market are all hanging on the shelves, and there is no way to pick them up if you touch them.