Poll answers....Pt. 2

[senoritafish]

angelsmum's question - "What's your most disgusting fish story?"
My job involves quite a few disgusting things. Often the fish samples we process don't freeze too well, and the fish are pretty nasty by the time we process them. When I first started, they didn't provide us with gloves, and I was often in mucky fish up to the elbows. When I was an albacore observer, I would often have to measure frozen albacore as it came off the boat, and even though it's frozen, it's still messy. I wore an apron, but I'd often come back to the office and my friend ML, who was my boss at the time, would yell, "God, you stink!" at me. The canneries, when they were there, always had a funk about them - you could tell just by the smell, when a tuna boat was unloading or when they were actively canning. All of them have gone away now, the last tuna cannerey in the continental United States closed a couple of years ago, when Chicken of the Sea at Terminal Island sold their plant. All the tuna is unloaded in Costa Rica or Samoa now.

But I digress. Probably one of my grossest experiences was while I still a scientific aide (aside from the time I was helping to clean the skeleton of dolphin - it didn't smell too good and there were dermestid beetles everywhere, but on the whole, pretty dry). One of the canneries we sampled was Coast Cannery, a very run-down place that took fish specifically for pet food. It was torn down at least 10 years ago, probably for being a health hazard. I would never feed my dog Skippy® dog food, because that's where it was canned. There were always trucks unloading pallet-loads of various types of offal - beef gullets, pork livers, god-knows-what, and the stench was enough to knock you down on a hot summer day. The huge concrete tanks that held the fish after the boat unloaded were not refrigerated, and more than once I had gigantic rats jump out at me as I climbed the rickety steps up to where the tanks were located.

The elderly Santa Teresa, a wooden purse seiner that dated from the '40s, was the only boat that fished regularly for this particular cannery, although others might get sent here if their catch was judged to be of poor quality. Unlike most of the other boats, which at least had some sort of brine system, it didn't have any refrigeration either. I think the owner operated it on the thinnest of shoestrings. You can imagine what shape the fish were in even before it got to the dock.


The Santa Teresa.

The dock was across the street from the cannery proper. After the fish was sucked out of the hold with a giant hose, it was lifted by a scoop conveyor to a tube that went over the street to the cannery. At most other places, we were able to get fish for our samples by just grabbing it off the conveyor or out of a small metal tank as it went by on a pallet jack. With this kind of conveyor, however, the fish were moved along by a huge screw inside the tube. This method of transfer was not very easy on the fish;.if any part of them got caught between the screw and the sides of the tube they would just get torn to shreds. When they reached the cannery, they fell from the end of this tube to another tube/screw arrangement, which transferred the fish to the tanks, one by one. The tanks were a good eight feet deep, six feet wide and fifteen feet long. You didn't want to reach into those tubes unless you were no longer fond of your arms, and there was no catwalk along the side of the tanks where the fish fell in. The only place to collect a sample was to put a bucket where one tube transferred to the other.

Did I mention there was no refrigeration in this whole set-up?

I arrived at Coast one summer day, dreading it because it was so hot. I looked in the boat's hold and noticed it was full of large mackerel, ordinarily a fairly handsome fish, blue and green, with reticulated stripes on their backs and rainbows on their tummies where the light refracts. These looked like large, fat fish, and the pump was having a little trouble picking them up because they were so big. I watched the lift conveyor for awhile and then headed across the street to the cannery.

I help my breath and made my way up to the tanks and the other end of the tube, bucket in hand. Usually by the time I got to the tanks, the reek of the rest of the cannery was somewhat less, but today it was much worse. I soon discovered why.

We always hate it when we process a sample of fish and find that the fish have been feeding. I suppose it's good they got a last meal, but the process of digestion starts the release of all those enzymes and chemicals for breaking down food, and after the fish dies, it continues. They're decaying on the inside before they ever get off the boat.

These were big fish, and had very full stomachs (they had been eating anchovies). The smell was awful. The screw was turning at a very high rate of speed, and every third fish was just ripped apart. I held my bucket under the tube, but I had to keep dumping out shredded fish in order to make room for the whole ones. There were bits of stinky fish flesh flying everywhere out out the coveyor tube's open top. I was wearing a rain slicker (damned uncomfortable on such a hot day), but it got in my face, in my hair, on my pants, on my shoes and over all my I had with me. I just gritted my teeth and kept my mouth closed.

After I got enough for a sample, I still couldn't leave. I had to watch the entire load go by (probably 25 or 30 tons) to determine species compostion, that is, if any other kinds of fish were caught along with it. Finally it was over, and gratefully headed back to the office. When I walked in the door, there was a collective "Eeewww!" from everyone I worked with. I stunk. I had to scrub off my rain slicker with a stiff brush, because on the way back all the pieces of fish had dried like cement. I would have taken advantage of the shower we have at office, but I was off, and I didn't have any shampoo.

I'm glad I didn't have to cut that sample. That cannery's been torn down and the boat is long gone as well, whether it sunk or was sold, I don't know. There's my disgusting fish story. And I hope your nose gets warm soon.

Comments

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

And I thought fishing on that damn ugly boat out of San Pedro to Catalina was disgusting...

Ick.

[metalmensch.livejournal.com]

I am again quite glad that the worst that can happen to me at work is that I get covered in syrup. Well, there is occasionally getting microbe growth which would knock over a horse, but that's so very seldom it's almost a welcome relief. :)

[angelsmum.livejournal.com]

Eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww!!!!

;) thanks!