Friday, August 7, 2009

Striped Bass

Hi everyone, I can't believe that I'm already writing my last blog entry for this class! It's been a fun week and it was great to meet all of you. I thought today's dissection of the striped bass was very interesting. It was my first of probably several future fish dissections, since i'm a marine science major, and i think it will be useful to know how to properly fillet a fish without spilling its stomach contents everywhere. The part i found most interesting was seeing the bass's lateral line, which i have studied a lot in past marine bio classes but have never actually seen up close and in person.
Above is a picture of my cooked bass fillet. I decided to go with a pretty simple recipe since my available ingredients were limited. I cut the fillet into thin strips and pan fillet them in butter with garlic salt and black pepper. I did not actually eat it myself but my roommate was very willing to take over this task for me. His comments were: "It tastes like what bass should taste like, only i can tell it was caught today because it tastes fresher than what I'm used to." So i guess my first fish-cooking experiment was a success!

I was thinking about what Bruce said about how we as fishers select for the runts of fish species by taking only large individuals when we catch them. I think a good solution to this problem would be to have a maximum legal size in addition to the standard minimum legal size. I know this is done with lobsters in New England to preserve the large females that can carry a lot more eggs than smaller females, and i think it would be a good strategy to implement for all fish species to preserve the stock.

Again, it was nice to meet all of you, best of luck!
-Sam Gifford

No comments: