当清晨的第一缕阳光穿透伶仃洋的薄雾，86米长、占3万立方米养殖水体的“格盛1号”深海养殖平台，如钢铁岛屿般稳稳矗立在南海海面。
28岁的河源青年黄锦尧穿戴好潜水装备，深吸一口气潜入工作吃水10.5米深的网箱。这个两年前还对海洋一无所知的“旱鸭子”，如今已练就一双水下观鱼的火眼金睛，每日守护着千万尾深海鱼的生长。
在他身后，53岁的运维工程师盛松江正忙着检查平台上的各种设备，以保证运作这座“海上巨无霸”每日运转正常；58岁的养殖老师傅叶悦和正关注着控制室里的各种数据，以保证鱼群健康生长。
三个背景迥异的“海上新农人”，共同选择将时光交给这片海。在这里，从近海到深蓝、从经验到科技、从传统渔业到现代牧海，每天上演着碰撞与交融，讲述了一个关于广东海洋渔业深刻变革的故事。
他们，从陆地到海上
“现在水下都归我管！”曾从事模具工程的黄锦尧从来没想到，自己会成为“格盛1号”上唯一的潜水员。
“格盛1号”是珠海首台正式产业化运营的现代化海洋牧场装备，其采用半潜桁架结构，既稳固又灵活，能够抵御海上强风浪，完全上浮时相当于5层楼高度，一次性可养450—600吨鱼。
“我老家是广东河源山区的，亲戚朋友从事水产工作的少得很。”眼前这位腼腆青年，此前的人生轨迹与海洋、渔业、水产都没有任何交集，但如今说起水下工作，显然已是行家里手。
潜入网箱观察鱼群情况，是黄锦尧每日最主要的工作。“看鱼的精神状态——游姿怎么样？体表有没有擦伤、掉鳞？粘液正不正常？其实就是看它游得欢快不欢快。”古人对“子非鱼，安知鱼之乐”的争辩，在黄锦尧这里仿佛一切有迹可循。
“鱼种不同习性也不同。像章红鱼是不停游动的，如果它趴在边边角角或者网底发呆，那就是精神不好。但即使状态不佳，水里还是它们的主场，想徒手抓到很难。真要能捞上来的，往往病得不轻，那就得解剖检查了。”
现代化海洋牧场是融合多技术的生态系统。坐拥4800公里海岸线的广东，近年来在海洋牧场建设中勇立潮头，积极推动传统渔业向现代化转型。在科技的加持下，大海不再是未知的神秘场域，而是一个需要用专业技能去应对的工作环境。
黄锦尧认为，“海上工程师”是他更准确的职业描述。他告诉记者，平台上的设备、数据，还有水下的情况，团队每个人都得懂。
养殖作业也迎来了海阔天空，新职业如雨后春笋般涌现：潜水员、数据分析师、设备运维工程师、智能养殖专家……时代造就了一批“海上新农人”，他们投身深远海养殖产业，以海为田，共同耕耘着这片深蓝，构建起一个高效、可持续的海洋渔业新生态。
他们，超越传统渔民
“老叶是养殖经理，他负责调配团队协作，是我们的头。”黄锦尧口中的老叶，是养了近30年鱼的叶悦和。这位在广东江门台山上川岛长大的渔民，也是团队里养殖经验最丰富的成员。
半辈子在海上“漂”，叶悦和对“格盛1号”最大的印象就是：太稳了。经历过木质渔排被台风摧毁的绝望，也见证过传统养殖“靠天吃饭”的无力，叶悦和无疑是对现代化养殖发展感受最深的其中一员。
台风季是最好的对比。今年台风“韦帕”席卷珠海，桂山岛大小蜘洲海域风力狂暴，风力足以掀起屋顶、折断树木。附近传统渔排损失惨重，而“格盛1号”在狂风巨浪中稳坐钓鱼台，鱼群仅出现轻微损耗，设备也保持完好。
这得益于其独特的“不倒翁”设计——半潜式结构使重心深埋水下，就像一个稳固的“不倒翁”扎在海里；而八条锚链从平台延伸至海底，紧紧拉住主体，确保了平台在狂风中的稳定。
“平台能抗17级台风，还有两个冷库囤饵料，风浪大了不用出海喂鱼，安全多了。”叶悦和感慨，以前养木排，一个网箱只能养几百斤鱼，一场台风就能让渔民一年的心血泡汤。现在在格盛1号，一万方水体能养25万斤，还能抵抗17级台风。
如今，黄锦尧成为叶悦和的“水下眼睛”，监测设备则是他的“水上大脑”。“过去渔民靠经验，看水色、听水声判断鱼情，现在水温、盐度、溶氧每天测三次，随时都能掌握水势变化。”叶悦和告诉记者。
数据说话更准，但经验也不能丢。“比如鱼群突然下沉，数据显示水温正常，可我知道是要变天了。”叶悦和一边观察着屏幕上的溶氧曲线，一边向记者解释：再加上黄锦尧的潜水检查，就能弥补智能监控在浑浊水体中“看不清”的盲区。
在“格盛1号”上，黄锦尧、叶悦和的角色早已超越传统渔民。每次下水前，叶悦和会叮嘱黄锦尧重点看什么；上来后，两人凑在一起，一个讲水下的情况，一个分析原因，问题就这样一点点被解决。
他们，在深蓝中新生
跟专注养殖的黄锦尧、叶悦和相比，盛松江更像是平台的大管家，水电、光伏、设备运维等问题全归他管。这个河南汉子以前在陆地搞机械维修，如今将工作场所转到大海之上，现代工业技术带来的安全感，消解了盛松江初次面对大海时的不安。
“平台的用电可以实现自给自足，且全部是清洁能源：光伏发电板能满足日常用电，还有大功率的发电机提供备用电能；海水淡化系统每天产2吨淡水，够生活用。”盛松江指着中控室的屏幕说，“这里是所有设备的‘大脑’，水温、气象、设备故障都会实时报警，我每天巡检一遍，确保万无一失。”
安全感更是来自平台的硬核参数：长86米、宽34米、高16.5米，3万方水体，吃水10.05米，四个角用8条锚链固定。“深远海的水更清，鱼的品质更好，而且抗风浪能力强，能走向远海。”盛松江说，“以前的重力式网箱抗不了大风浪，现在这种桁架式平台是未来的趋势。”
海上养殖要从近海走向远海，关键要解决“具备抗风浪能力，自主供给能源，能稳定搭载人员设施”这三大需求。从面世之初，“格盛1号”即凭借科技系数的强大，具有自动化程度高、稳定性好、造价低等优势，被誉为“澎湖号”“海威”系列的迭代升级版。
近年来，广东积极布局深远海养殖，从珠海桂山岛到湛江雷州半岛，越来越多的现代化养殖平台驶向更深的远海。它们不仅带来了规模化养殖的效益，更带来了新的职业机会，以及一大批“海上新农人”。
今年11月，全球首创的漂浮式动力定位网箱型养殖工船“湛江湾1号”迎来交付投产。平台装配养殖监测设备和AI辅助系统，让“AI养殖”成为了现实——这也意味着，一大批AI技术人才又从陆地走到了海上。
夕阳西下，余晖洒在“格盛1号”的钢铁甲板上。自动投料机甫一启动，鱼群争相跃出水面抢食，划出一道道金色的弧线。“未来，我想带父母来看看这座海上堡垒，”黄锦尧笑着说，“让他们知道，现在养鱼和以前不一样了。”
深蓝之上，渔民、渔村、渔业的现代化图景正在被重新改写，更多从山区成长起来的黄锦尧们，从传统渔民转型的叶悦和们，曾是陆地机械专家的盛松江们，选择将自己的职业生涯投身神秘的深远海洋——这是传统与现代的交融，更是广东海洋强省战略的生动实践。
近年来，广东积极落实省委“1310”具体部署，全面推进海洋强省建设，出台了全国首个海洋渔业全产业发展规划。在这场构建现代化海洋牧场全产业链体系的浪潮中，一群满怀智慧与勇气的“海上新农人”破浪而出——
他们耕海牧渔，驾驭巨型智能网箱向远洋开拓养殖空间，构建多元的食物供给体系，不断充实广东“蓝色粮仓”；他们腾跃潮头，延链强链做强海洋牧场全产业链，让广东海洋产品热销全球，为区域经济发展注入“蓝色动力”；他们逐浪深蓝，在万顷碧波下筛取治病良方，从海洋资源中挖掘无限可能，打开通往未来的“蓝色宝库”……扬科技之帆、掌产业之舵，他们在波涛之下，播种希望，放牧未来，描绘出一幅建设现代化海洋牧场的壮阔图景。
为展现广东“海上新农人”勇于开拓创新的精神风貌，记录广东向海图强的生动实践，南方农村报推出“海上新农人”系列融媒报道，跟拍“海上新农人”的一天，敬请垂注。
English
When the first thread of morning cuts the mist on the Lingding Sea, Gesheng No. 1 stands fast on the South China Sea: eighty-six metres long, thirty thousand cubic metres of water, a steel island.
Huang Jinyao, twenty-eight, from Heyuan, straps on his gear, draws one breath, and drops into a cage whose working draft is 10.5 metres. Two years ago he was a dry-land duck who knew nothing of the sea. Now he has trained a pair of eyes that can read a fish underwater, and every day he keeps watch over tens of millions of them as they grow.
Behind him, Sheng Songjiang, fifty-three, the engineer who keeps the machines, is checking the gear so this leviathan of the sea can run through another day. Ye Yuehe, fifty-eight, the old master of the farm, watches the figures in the control room, so the school may grow in health.
Three new farmers of the sea, from lives that do not resemble one another, have chosen to give their time to this water. Here the near shore meets the deep blue, experience meets the instrument, and the old fishery meets a modern pasturing of the sea. Every day the collision, and the blending, tell how Guangdong’s marine fishery is being remade.
From the land to the sea
“Everything under the water is mine now.” Huang used to work in mould engineering. He never thought he would be the only diver on Gesheng No. 1.
It is the first modern marine-ranch machine in Zhuhai to run as a real business. The frame is a semi-submersible truss, steady and able to give, built for a heavy sea. Fully risen it stands about five storeys, and it can hold 450 to 600 tonnes of fish at once.
“I’m from the hills of Heyuan. Almost nobody in the family works with fish.” He is quiet, and until recently the sea, the fishery, and aquaculture were nowhere in his life. Talk to him about the work underwater and he is already a hand.
Going down to look at the school is most of his day. “You read how they are. How do they swim? Any scrapes, any missing scales? Is the slime right? Really you are asking whether they are swimming as if they mean it.” The old argument — you are not a fish, so how do you know its joy — has, for him, a trail he can follow.
“Each fish has its own habit. A crimson snapper keeps moving. If it sits in a corner or stares at the bottom of the net, it is not well. Even then the water is their ground, and catching one by hand is hard. The one you can lift out is usually sick enough that it has to be opened and looked at.”
A modern marine ranch is an ecosystem of several techniques at once. Guangdong has 4,800 kilometres of coast, and in recent years it has pushed the building of these ranches and the turn from an old fishery to a modern one. With the instruments, the sea stops being an unknown and becomes a workplace that asks for a skill.
He thinks “engineer at sea” is the truer name. The machines, the numbers, and what is happening underwater: everyone on the team, he says, has to know all three.
The work itself has opened out, and new jobs have come with it: divers, people who read the data, engineers who keep the machines, specialists in smart farming. The time has made a set of new farmers of the sea. They have gone into farming far offshore, taken the water as a field, and are building a fishery that can last and that does not waste.
Past the old idea of a fisherman
“Old Ye is the farming manager. He sets how we work together. He’s the head.” Old Ye is Ye Yuehe, who has kept fish for nearly thirty years. He grew up on Shangchuan Island, in Taishan, Jiangmen, and he is the person on the team who has farmed the longest.
Half a life on the water, and what strikes him most about Gesheng No. 1 is how still it is. He has watched a wooden raft destroyed by a typhoon, and he has lived the old farming that waits on the sky. Few people feel the change as sharply as he does.
Typhoon season makes the comparison. This year Wipha crossed Zhuhai. Around Guishan and the Zhizhou islands the wind was enough to lift a roof and break a tree. The old rafts nearby were badly hit. Gesheng No. 1 sat through it. The loss of fish was slight, and the machines held.
The shape is a roly-poly. The semi-submersible puts the weight deep, so the platform sits in the sea the way that toy sits on a table. Eight chains run from it to the bottom and hold the body, which is what keeps it steady in a hard wind.
“It can take a force-17 typhoon, and there are two cold stores for feed, so when the sea is up you do not have to go out to feed. It is much safer.” On a wooden raft, he says, one cage held a few hundred jin, and one typhoon could take a year’s work. Here, 10,000 cubic metres holds 250,000 jin, and the platform still stands in a force-17 wind.
Huang is now Ye’s eyes underwater, and the monitors are his mind above it. “Fishermen used to go by what they had seen: the colour of the water, the sound of it. Now temperature, salinity, and oxygen are measured three times a day, and you can follow the water as it changes.”
The numbers are more exact, and the experience still has a job. “If the school drops suddenly and the temperature reads normal, I know the weather is about to turn.” He says this while watching the oxygen curve. Huang’s dive then covers the place the cameras cannot see, when the water is too thick.
On this platform the two of them have already left the old job of a fisherman. Before each dive Ye tells Huang what to look for. When he comes up they sit together, one describing the water, the other working out why, and the problem is taken apart.
A new start in deep water
Beside Huang and Ye, who stay with the fish, Sheng is closer to the housekeeper of the platform: power, water, solar, and the machines. He is from Henan, and he used to repair machinery on land. The workplace is now the sea. The security of modern industrial kit is what took the unease out of his first meeting with it.
“The platform can power itself, and the power is clean. The solar panels cover the ordinary day, and a large generator sits in reserve. The desalination plant makes two tonnes of fresh water a day, enough to live on.” He points at the screen in the control room. “This is the brain of every machine. Water temperature, weather, a fault: they alarm as they happen. I walk the platform once a day so nothing is left to chance.”
The rest of the security is in the measurements: 86 metres long, 34 wide, 16.5 high, 30,000 cubic metres of water, a draught of 10.05 metres, eight chains on four corners. “Far offshore the water is clearer, the fish are better, and the platform can take a sea, so it can go out.” The old gravity cages, he says, could not. A truss platform like this is where the work is going.
To move farming off the coast, three things have to be solved: a machine that can take a wave, power it can make for itself, and a place people and equipment can stay. From the day it appeared, Gesheng No. 1 was read as the next version of the Penghu and Haiwei line: more of the work automatic, a steadier body, and a lower cost, on the strength of the engineering in it.
In recent years Guangdong has laid out farming far offshore, from Guishan in Zhuhai to the Leizhou Peninsula in Zhanjiang. More modern platforms are sailing into deeper water. They bring the return of farming at scale, and they bring new jobs, and a large number of these new farmers of the sea.
This November, Zhanjiang Bay No. 1 — a floating, dynamically positioned farming ship, the first of its kind — was delivered and put to work. Monitoring equipment and an AI system are on board, so farming with AI is no longer a phrase. It also means a further set of people who work with AI have left the land for the sea.
At dusk the light lies on the steel deck. The feeder starts, and the fish break the surface for it, gold arcs in a line. “One day I want to bring my parents to see this fort,” Huang says, and he is smiling. “So they know that keeping fish is not what it was.”
Out on the deep water, the picture of the fisherman, the village, and the fishery is being rewritten. More people like Huang, who grew up in the hills; like Ye, who crossed over from the old fishery; like Sheng, who was a mechanic on land: they are putting their working lives into a sea that is still strange. It is the old and the new in the same place, and it is Guangdong’s maritime strategy as a thing you can stand on.
In recent years Guangdong has carried out the provincial “1310” plan, pushed the building of a stronger maritime province, and issued the country’s first plan for the whole marine-fishery industry. In the work of building a full chain of modern marine ranches, a group of these new farmers of the sea have come out through the waves.
They farm the sea, take giant smart cages farther out, and fill out Guangdong’s store of food from the water. They lengthen the chain of the ranch so marine products from the province sell widely, and so the regional economy has a force that comes from the sea. They go after the deep water for medicines and for what the ocean can still yield. With the technical work as the sail and the industry as the helm, they sow and they graze under the waves, and the picture is a modern marine ranch being built.
To show the temper of these new farmers, and to record Guangdong turning toward the sea, Southern Rural News is running a series that follows one of their days. The paper asks the reader to stay with it.