To Eat or Not To Eat? (Warning: Contains Graphic Images)

[SquidJig]

Does anyone know what this stuff is? I've never seen before. It resembles beach tar, grainy, black, and a little tough to break apart. It's everywhere in this fish, in the gut cavity, in connective tissue, in the flesh. It ranges in size from grains of sand to flattened peas. I don't have a problem with nearly invisible worms but this stuff is down right ugly. The fish tasted fine but I couldn't eat it without shredding it and picking out all the black stuff.

So, is fish like this better off in the dumpster? I guess it can't all pass inspection, right?

[mtnbykr2]

freeze it....it will cook away anyhow....parasites

[wiredantz]

Originally Posted by mtnbykr2

freeze it....it will cook away anyhow....parasites

You can always Charbroil it and eat it for extra flavor!!!

[tasteslikechikn54]

Originally Posted by wiredantz

You can always Charbroil it and eat it for extra flavor!!!

Just marinate it in preparation H... Definitely fish hemorroids...

[The Kid]

Yikes

[deepdvr]

That is exactly why I release all the yellows I catch in the back of SD bay.

[William Novotny]

What kind if fish was it? maybe blood clots? weird

[SquidJig]

Originally Posted by William Novotny

What kind if fish was it? maybe blood clots? weird

It was a YT. I was guessing blood clots caused by some wicked parasite. From the replies. This seems to be very rare. Bummer. Even when I get a good one, it's bad. I guess I'll just have to keep fishing.

[DanaPT]

how did it smell?

[Podaker]

Originally Posted by DanaPT

how did it smell?

like chicken!

[tasteslikechikn54]

Originally Posted by DanaPT

how did it smell?

I would say it probably smelled like a chum bucket... I would have tossed it... Tight lines...

[pchen911]

Just cut it off and eat it. Do you think they throw away entire fillets if they see parasites when packaging the fish you buy at the supermarket?

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by SquidJig

Does anyone know what this stuff is? I've never seen before. It resembles beach tar, grainy, black, and a little tough to break apart. It's everywhere in this fish, in the gut cavity, in connective tissue, in the flesh. It ranges in size from grains of sand to flattened peas. I don't have a problem with nearly invisible worms but this stuff is down right ugly. The fish tasted fine but I couldn't eat it without shredding it and picking out all the black stuff.

So, is fish like this better off in the dumpster? I guess it can't all pass inspection, right?

I've seen that stuff in one fish. A decent yellow I caught off Point Vicente about a decade ago. The substance looked felt and smelled just like some kind of petroleum based tar. Really weird stuff, that basically did not look like it even belonged in there.

On my fish the stuff was in his flesh around and old injury in the fishes back a actual healed over notch where it looked like it had been bitten by a shark. The weird thing is in that notch it had been attacked by really large parasites that looked like some form of anchor worms. I've never seen anything like them in other fish.

You can kind of see them in this pic.



That's an old pic I put up on Allcoast back in 2001...LOL Time flies when your having fun

[Fiskadoro]

OK I did some digging through some pics from back in 2001 and I found the archive I made for that trip on disc.

So it's back from October 14 2001, and here's a better pic of the parasites in the fishes back.



So those I think are some kind of anchor worm. All you can see is the tail end with the gills and filaments. Inside the flesh is the bulk of the worm surronded by a hard shell like structure they build inside with kind of a T at the end to hold them in place. I've seen anchor worms in yellows and Dorado an number of times but never any that were even close to being this big.

Now the reason I'm posting this is ever since I caught that fish I've wondered if the oily tar crap was there because of the original injury in the fishes back or it was there as some kind of by product of the worms. I mean the tar was right in the same area but it was not part of the worm. I've looked around online for it and never found anything that described the same thing till your post.

I always figured the tar was from the the original injury and the worms got in there later. Now since your fish has had the same thing I'm starting to think the tar might be some kind of waste product that came from the worms.

In my fish there were several chunks like yours but bigger some almost half an inch long. So I got to ask were there any hard shell like tubular structures near the tar in the flesh of your fish or visble worms associated with it?

You got more guts then I do by the way. Once I saw all that shit in the fish and smelled that oily smell I tossed my fish, but then again I caught it in the PCB Capital of California so I was pretty concerned about the idea of some kind of contamination.

Man looking over those old pics got me going. Here's a C-Bass from the same trip.


The next weekend I got into wide open Albicore 14 miles off Avila...






Now that was a trip. No fish under thirty the biggest 46 and after we filled all our chests then we caught and released 35 and 40 pound fish for hours, trying to break the fifty mark. Epic fishing back then.

Great stuff: thanks for your post. I always wondered if anyone else caught a fish with tar inside.

Jim

[Fiskadoro]

So I did some reading.

Turns out anchor worms are not true worms but crustaceons or more technically copepods. There are something like 13000 described species many more that have not been classified and about half of the known ones are parasitic. Copepods are specific to their environment so unlike worms you can't get a copepod infestation by eating them in fish. Think of them like extra protean: like fish with internal shrimp, or added mini lobsters in their flesh.


Still could not find anything on the tar. Seems to be a really rare phenomena.

There are so many species of Copepods out there it looks like it's almost impossible to find the life cycle of the exact version I posted above.

That said I now have a theory. If I had to guess I'd say if the tar does come from the anchor worms it's probably waste like copepod crap that normally is absorbed by the fish itself.

Many copepods don't use their host for food but for a good ride to food. I know with sharks they actually feed on small shit that ends up in the water when the sharks feed.

I'd say the copepods in this case are filter feeders kind of like barnacles or mussels. Over time they sweep in various food from the water surrounding the fish. Due to weird adaption of their anatomy when they shit the shit goes into the fish itself. I know that sounds weird, like you would think it's ass end would be outside the fish, but in strictly evolutionary terms there is no need for the copepod to evolve that way, so even though it's gills are in this case external to the fish out of necessity , it's waste or anal cavity is probably located in it's abdominal sections like with most copepods, and in this case it's probably inside the fish.

So the copepod most likely shits right into the fishes flesh, but that is usually not an issue since the amount is tiny and the fishes biology over time naturally just eliminates this through absorption and the excretion.

The deal is any inorganic substance like oil can't be absorbed by the fish.

So over time as the copepod feeds by taking in various organic and inorganic particles out of the surrounding water, it then shits what it can't digest into the flesh of the fishes flesh.

The fish can absorb and then eliminate any organic stuff in that waste however any non organic particles taken in by the copepod that get passed into the fish through the waste can not be eliminated.

The inorganic stuff gets caught in the fishes flesh and over time accumulates creating essentially a inorganic oily waste abscess. The fish creates a structure, a abscess wall, or capsule around this, formed by the fishes adjacent healthy cells in an attempt to keep the inorganic material from infecting neighboring structures. So you essentually end up with little tar balls abscesses in the fish.

The tar I found in my fish looked smelled and even acted like real tar. It even melted and burnt when heated with a lighter. That to me suggest it's real tar. The fact you found similar tar suggests it was not a single event isolated to the fishes injury but a biological process, and if that is true the above bio/waste-accumulation scenario is about the only way I can figure out how it could of possibly gotten in there.

The anchor worms in my fish were huge. about as big around as a pencil and maybe six to eight inches long. My take is theyay had been in there for a long long time. So even though the amount of inorganic oily crap, they may have ingested on a daily basis was extremely small, over the years since it had nowhere to it could of built up into sizable tar balls I found in the fish.

So eating the fish...Hhhhhmmmmm!!! Well if I had to guess: Though the copepods themselves present no danger the tar is a bunch of inorganic possibly toxic waste built up over time. That said the whole point of an abscess is to keep such crap isolated and out of the rest of the tissue. So probably the rest of the flesh is clean and edible but certainy would not cook or eat the tar. It's likely a tiny waste landmine or poison pill stuck in the rest of the clean healthy fish flesh, and it could likely be distributed into the rest of the meat by simply cooking it.

Like I said interesting stuff. Too bad one of us did not save the meat for analysis.

Jim

[ful-rac]

Aww man thats gross! Nice pictures though! Good info jim ive seen worms in fish and all sorts of parasites but never that big! You sure that thing ain't a huge fish tag worth a lot of money or a free rod???? J/k....

Yeah i wouldnt eat that fish either doesnt seem like a good idea id toss it personally.

[radastaff]

so worm castings then?
hrmmm

makes good fertilizer
so ive herd

[SquidJig]

Wow, Jim, thanks for all the effort. I think I'll just give up eating fish all together. Right!

Actually, dos ballenas has offered to analyze some tissue samples. I haven't smelled the stuff but I will and I'll also see if it burns. I don't think it's tar but your theory on an exterior parasite creating pockets of concentrated waste inside of a fish seems reasonable. I just didn't see anything similar to that monster hanging out of your YT, just the usual nematode type worms inside. Blood clots caused by internal parasites seems more likely, or as I think you suggest, encysted clumps of parasites.

The black stuff seems to be concentrated around the gut. I understand that ingested parasites often migrate from the gut to the flesh surrounding it. As I have cut the big chunks into smaller ones, it seems that there is plenty of clean meat further away from the gut.

I guess I'd better do some dissecting. I'd like to hear what our resident researcher finds out. I'll let you know what happens.

As for the other photos, that's just showing off.

Steve

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by SquidJig

As for the other photos, that's just showing off.

I have a strict policy. I only post fish pictures that are at least a decade old in order to protect vulnerable fish populations from over-exploitation. Those pics just make the cut off.

This goes hand and hand with my policy of only dating women over 25.

Jim

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by ful-rac

Aww man thats gross!..... i wouldnt eat that fish either doesnt seem like a good idea id toss it personally.

If I knew then what I know now I just would of pulled the worms out of it's back and released it. That fish was like four feet long but only in it's twenties, those parasites were really taking a toll. Tough old fish!! If it lasted that long with them, it might of grown into a huge trophy if they were removed and it was released.

Evidently anchor worms are pretty similar to fish lice. Since they do not lay eggs in the fish if you remove them they are done and have no way re-infesting the fish. I originally thought it would eat, till I found the tar shit inside and then I was like no way. I actually feel really bad that I killed it.

You know how it is though. You get a decent yellow next to the boat fishing solo, you hit them with the gaff as quick as you can.

I got that fish flylining squid on straight fifteen pound mono fishing in really poor visibility, in dense fog, maybe fifty feet off a boiler rock, in flat calm conditions. I knew the boiler was there but couldn't even see it because of the lack of visibility, and the fish kept spinning the boat around while taking line. Really disorienting. I was so nervous when it burned so much drag, then blown away by its size when I finally got it up, that I had it gaffed and decked in a heartbeat, and did not even notice the parasites till I'd already killed her.

Jim