Chapter 162: Dongsha Island

The most problematic was phosphate fertilizer. The group pondered for a long time. The most readily available natural phosphate fertilizer was animal bones. The Agriculture Committee had been using fish bones and fish scraps from the seafood processing plant to fertilize the fields, and occasionally, they would get some animal bones. But now, to improve 1,500 mu of land, where would they find so many bones?

Applying plant ash could also supplement phosphate, but there was still the problem of quantity.

After much deliberation, the group decided to call Luo Duo.

Luo Duo was now working in the Social Department of the Political Security Bureau, compiling blacklists every day. His life was very fulfilling, but he still continued to act as a living dictionary in his spare time.

Wu Nan Hai’s question was: how to make phosphate fertilizer without phosphate rock?

“That’s easy,” Luo Duo said. “Boil plant ash…”

“I know that, and I know about animal bones, but I need to fertilize 1,500 mu of severely phosphorus-deficient land.”

“Ask the metallurgy department for steel slag,” Luo Duo said. “I remember they use a small converter, right? That’s perfect.” He continued, “Mixing steel slag with lime can produce a kind of earthen phosphate fertilizer.”

In the converter steelmaking process, the slagging process uses sand to create acidic slag, which displaces the phosphorus from the pig iron. Therefore, the converter slag contains a considerable amount of phosphorus.

“Good,” Wu Nan Hai said and immediately called the metallurgy department.

Ji Wusheng told him that most of the accumulated steel slag after steelmaking had already been used as road paving material. The steel plant only had a few tons in stock.

“A few tons is enough,” Fa Shilu said. “Let’s make do with it for now. If it’s not enough, we’ll use a large amount of plant ash. Have the students of the national school launch a campaign to recycle plant ash. And then use a large amount of peat.”

“I wonder if the Foreign Commerce Committee has settled the matter with Nanbao?”

The lignite and peat from the Nanbao coal mine were the main sources of fertilizer for Lin’gao in the modern era. The transmigrators would naturally not let this go. But Nanbao was close to the Li area and was a hilly region. The long-range exploration team had been there several times and had concluded that self-mining would be too costly and the distance was too far, almost equivalent to opening a new base. It was best to have the locals mine it and then purchase it from them.

But so far, this had not been accomplished. The locals had little interest in mining the black coal, and even if the transmigrator group was willing to buy it, no one was willing to mine and transport it.

After Wu Nan Hai reported the need for lignite as fertilizer to the Executive Committee, Wu De decided that there was no time to lose and that they should use a compulsory allocation method to collect it. He sent people to summon the liaison officers from the villages near Nanbao and gave them the task of mining and transporting a certain number of “large catties” of lignite to Bairen. In return, their grain tax could be paid in kind with lignite and peat.

“Thank you so much,” Wu Nan Hai was almost moved to tears. “Actually, it would be best if we could also have phosphate rock…”

“I have nowhere to find that,” Wu De said helplessly. “There’s no such thing here.”

“How about we send a ship to Yulin Port to mine it?” Wu Nan Hai said. He had seen in a report that phosphate rock had been discovered near Tiandu.

Ma Qianzhu shook his head. “The phosphate rock in Yulin is not on the coast. You have to go inland for about ten kilometers. Without roads or equipment, it would take at least a month to transport it back.”

“I see,” Wu Nan Hai said with a disappointed look. “Can’t we think of a way—send a small mining team to mine about ten tons first?”

“This—” Ma Qianzhu thought for a moment. The Agriculture Committee was not the only one who needed phosphorus. The chemical industry department and the weapons group had also submitted proposals for phosphate rock. It would be half a year before they could all patiently wait for the development of Tiandu. Other things could wait, but the food problem was not to be trifled with.

“I’ll ask the resource department if there’s a quick and economical way,” Ma Qianzhu said, picking up the phone on his desk.

“Operator, this is the Planning Committee. Connect me to office 22.”

“The quickest solution is to go to Dongsha Island and mine guano,” came the reply from Zhao Xue, the secretary of the long-range exploration team. “According to the resource map, it’s not far from here. The island is piled high with guano, and it’s easy to open-pit mine. One shipload would be enough.”

“It would be even better if we had guano,” Wu Nan Hai said. Guano was not only rich in phosphorus but also contained nitrogen and potassium, making it a natural compound fertilizer. This would even save them the trouble of potassium fertilizer.

“Alright, let’s dispatch the navy,” Ma Qianzhu immediately decided. “Please have the People’s Commissar for the Navy, Chen Haiyang, come here. We’ll plan the deployment of the ships.”

Wu Nan Hai was almost overwhelmed. This efficiency, this decisiveness, was much better than the feeling of “let’s discuss it, let’s talk about it” for everything.

It was decided that the Zhenhai would set out to mine the guano. Time was of the essence, and sending a sailboat would take ten days or more. A hybrid-powered ship was much more convenient. After all, sailing against the wind was a technical skill, and among the transmigrators, only the Qian brothers from North America were relatively experienced—they had at least played with small sailboats.

Under the command of Lin Chuanqing, the Zhenhai quickly found Dongsha Island using the nautical charts. The island was about 2.5 kilometers wide and very flat, with no mountains, but many coconut trees. A large number of seabirds were constantly circling and landing on the island. They flew up and down around the masts of the Zhenhai, occasionally leaving “gifts” for the sailors on deck.

“Damn it!” Lin Chuanqing cursed, spitting. His hat had already been christened. Fishermen were somewhat superstitious and considered this to be bad luck.

“So many birds, there must be a lot of guano,” Bai Guoshi said enthusiastically.

“To hell with your guano,” Lin Chuanqing said, putting on a straw hat. “How did I get stuck with this mission!”

As a fisherman and a former snakehead who had smuggled people for many years, Lin Chuanqing knew where Dongsha Island was without a nautical chart. But he had never gone near the place before. There were Taiwanese marines on the island, and inspections were a hassle. If they were in a bad mood and thought you were a spy, they might even give you a string of bullets, which would be even more unpleasant.

“Water depth 8.3 meters, distance 3 chains!” a sailor reported loudly.

“Slow down, lower the small boats, and sound the depth!” Lin Chuanqing ordered. So, a few sailors lowered a small boat and rowed towards the island.

Bai Guoshi said, “Dongsha Island has a lagoon. Can’t we just sail the ship directly in?”

“It’s too shallow,” Lin Chuanqing shook his head. Although he had never been to Dongsha Island, he had heard that the lagoon was very shallow. “At low tide, it’s less than 1 meter deep. We’ll run aground if we go in.”

The entire Dongsha Island was crescent-shaped, with an area of about one square kilometer. There was a lagoon on the western side of the island. This lagoon was less than 1 meter deep at low tide, and the entrance was only 20 meters wide, making it almost useless as an anchorage for a coral island. Because the opening of the lagoon was so small, the water exchange was very limited, causing a long-term accumulation of organic debris at the bottom. Overall, it was similar to a coastal swamp ecosystem, completely different from the crystal-clear, coral-rich lagoons commonly found on coral islands. The few transmigrators who had hoped to enjoy the scenery of a tropical coral island were disappointed.

Led by the sounding boat, the ship rounded the western side of the island. Dongsha Island was actually the only one in a series of atolls that was above water. The entire Dongsha Atoll was about 20 kilometers in diameter, and ships could enter this atoll lagoon to anchor. However, because it lacked a barrier of exposed coral reefs, its value as a harbor for shelter from the wind was limited.

“Stop the engine! Drop anchor!” Lin Chuanqing maneuvered the ship as close to the shore as possible, dropping anchor only when the keel was about to scrape the bottom.

“Assemble the pontoon bridge!” Lin Chuanqing continued to give orders.

Mining guano required moving heavy objects, and Dongsha Island had no lagoon for large ships to dock. Using small boats to go back and forth was too inefficient, so the Zhenhai had brought a set of floating bridge sections to temporarily connect the beach and the ship.

“Is there anyone on the island? Should we have everyone bring their weapons?” Bai Guoshi asked Lin Chuanqing. He had put his pistol in a waterproof holster.

“There shouldn’t be. Summer is not the fishing season. Fishermen won’t come here. But there are a lot of sharks here.” Lin Chuanqing said, picking up a megaphone and shouting, “Everyone be careful, there are a lot of sharks in the sea! Do not fall into the water. If you are injured, come back to the big ship immediately. Do not urinate in the sea! If you see a shark, do not panic…”

The lagoon of Dongsha Island itself was rich in organic debris at the bottom. When the lagoon water flowed out into the nearby sea, it created a feeding cue, attracting creatures that hunt by smell, like sharks, to follow the current to the vicinity of the lagoon. Therefore, the shark density here was particularly high. In addition to sharks, there were also many fierce predatory fish in the atoll lagoon, whose aggression and lethality were not to be underestimated.

Two more small boats were lowered, and the sailors untied the pontoon bridge sections from the hull and began to connect them with iron chains. Lin Chuanqing ordered the marines on board to be armed and on alert on both sides of the ship. Each small boat was also equipped with a dedicated shark guard, armed with a harpoon and wearing chainmail arm guards and gloves made of fine iron rings.

As expected, there were many sharks in the atoll lagoon, of various species. In the clear seawater, these ocean predators could be seen swimming happily. Everyone was very nervous. When they were nervous, their movements became clumsy, and it took twice as long as usual to assemble the pontoon bridge. The nearly one-hundred-meter-long pontoon bridge rose and fell with the waves, and the fins of sharks could be seen breaking the surface from time to time. The faces of the first group of people to cross the bridge to the island were pale. Several of the transmigrators who had originally planned to go ashore to have a look decided not to go.

Bai Guoshi, who was responsible for directing the mining of the guano, had no choice but to bite the bullet and get off the ship. Holding his breath, he walked across the pontoon bridge with trepidation and arrived on the island. It was no different from the general description of Dongsha Island he had learned in geography.

The island was slightly higher in the northeast and slightly lower in the southwest, with a low-lying center. The average elevation was about five or six meters, with the highest point in the northeast being about ten meters high. The entire island was high on the periphery and low in the center. The central low-lying area was the silted-up lagoon, which accounted for about one-third of the island’s area, with the opening facing west.