Packing live fish - GIF

[Altair]

Packing live fish.




Previously:

Portable fish tank - photo
Fish chute fail - GIF
Fish splitting machine - GIF
Fish gutting and filleting machine - GIF
Fish sorting line - GIF

[Bony]

I wonder how long a fish can survive after this kind of packaging? Seems very cruel to me.

[Frank S]

I wonder how long a fish can survive after this kind of packaging? Seems very cruel to me.

I guess that would depend largely on how much water is sealed in the bag I bought a female Beta for my aquarium once, along with several other fish in other packages this was long enough ago that they just filled the bag with the fish and the water then tied a knot in the top of the bag. Somehow the bag with the Beta got misplaced in the car and we couldn't find it the rest of the bags were there so we thought maybe we had left it at the fish store. Too late in the day to make the drive back to the Mall. I found the bag under the seat a couple days later the Beta was still alive.
Some species of catfish can live for days completely out of the water. other species of fish burrow into the mud when a pond dries up and survive long periods of time in hibernation until the next rain.

[Bony]

There are frogs and some species of fish that can survive in dried up lakes in central Australia for about 8 years, waiting for flooding rains. When Lake Eyre floods, every once in a while, on average every 8 years, as it happens, it becomes a vast inland sea covering up to 9,500 square kilometres (3,670 sq miles) and pelicans fly inland from the coast thousands of kilometres to feast on the abundance. How do they know ? Who knows ?

I've driven into Birdsville in outback Queensland, which is about as remote a town as you'll find anywhere whilst there were flooded roads for miles around and in low range 4WD for dozens of kilometres in about 400mm deep water over the track and had to beep the horn to get the pelicans out of the way.

[piper184]

Those look to be some form of carp. They are very tough and can live a long time as long as their gills stay wet. There is a small amount of water in the bag and they are filling the bag with a gas which is probably pure oxygen. Those fish could probably live several days in that setup.

I suspect they are destined for some market where live fish are preferred and probably won't actually be in that bags that long.

In South Dakota there are some lakes that are over infested with a type of carp. There is also an ethnic group in NY City that has some kind of celebration in the middle of winter and they use a LOT of carp. They want them live so they can be slaughtered and cooked in a certain time frame and manor. Now the carp have value but what to do?

If the lakes are sufficiently frozen over, they cut fairly large holes at opposite ends. Then cut two slots out to the edge of the lake and between the holes. They stuff large nets into one hole and use heavy equipment to drag the net to the opposite hole. The catch is then just put live into refrigerated semi trailers and the loads are driven straight through to NY City and the fish are still all alive for the markets.

This was all many years ago. I have no idea if they still do it or not.