Migrant Worker

Every morning when I get to work, I glance through two online publications: the New York Times, and, for “interesting” China news, Shanghiist. Today, a story about snails caught my eye — apparently people in Beijing are eating these things and getting meningitis. Good to know, since I eat everything I find for sale on the street.

Anyway, the article made brief mention of a related snail outbreak in rice paddies in Guangxi, which is both closer to my neighborhood and in my field (molluscicides are pretty toxic, yo.) The first thing I discovered is these little guys have lots of names. In addition to Amazonian Snail, they are also called “Apple Snail,” and in Chinese, they are “daping snail” (大瓶螺) or “fushou snail” (ç¦?寿螺). And it turns out they have been causing problems for a while:

(from a 2002 article on invasive species in the People’s Daily, see it here)

The species of snail Liu mentioned, Amazonian snail which is dubbed “Fushou snail” in China, was introduced to the southern county in the 1980s as a food delicacy. However, the snails bred very rapidly to infiltrate all lakes, brooks and ponds in the whole county - a disaster for local farmers as they tended to eat every seedling in the rice fields and seize bait from carp in fishponds.

From the perspective of my organization (see our awful website here), this next bit was even more interesting:

Making matters worse, the Amazonian snail is strongly resistant to highly toxic pesticides. Farmers have to pick them up by hand and take them far from water so they shrivel to death or directly bury them. But such labor-intensive methods have proved ineffectual against the powerful potency of the river snails. Having run out of options, the farmers are appealing to scientists to find or breed a natural enemy of the river snail.

Yeah, it is so awful that the snail is resistant to “highly toxic pesticides” — the farmers pick them off by hand instead of dumping tons of chemicals into the rice paddies. Boo hoo.

The article I found on Guangxi Agricultural Information Network (in Chinese, here) was far more informative, but, again, is in Chinese. Apparently they have found some chemical solutions since 2002. Some bits translated here —

自家田里施了激螺迯忎，螺虽然死了，忯丿到两三天，忈从水沟和别人家的田里爬过濥。(After a family applies molluscicide, the snails will die, however, within two or three days, they come back from neighboring fields and irrigation channels.)

(…)有计划组织农民养鸭，在螺念孵化时，放鸭孿到田里〿沟里心掉幼螺；在禿寿螺釿忑区，农民覿在规定时间内，在田地〿水沟〿池塘内统一投放激螺迯，开展全鿢性迯激。 (There is a plan to organize farmers to raise ducks, and at the time when the snales reproduce, put the ducks in the fields and irrigation channels to eat snail eggs and young snails. In areas where outbreaks of Fushou snails are serious, farmers should establish a time during which fileds, channels, and reservoirs will all be treated with molluscicide to kill snails simultaneously).

Gotta wonder what is going to happen to those ducks after they wander around in the poisonous fields eating toxic dead snails.