Ca-Fa-Shey

Day 9 May 30 – 11.02 PM - Ca-Fa-Shey

The plan was to see the harvest at 5AM, come back to my room at 7AM and leave to go to Ca-Fa-Shey. Well the driver showed up to take me to the harvest at around 6.50 so that didn’t work out. But I took the hour drive to Ca-Fa-Shey, a private farm owned by Dr. Ishmail. I found out later Dr. Ismail is famous in Egypt as the father of aquaculture. At the height of his production he was personally responsible for over 2 million pounds of fish production a year. He became wealthy years ago when he was the first to implement a new aquaculture technique.
The trip to Ca-Fa-Shey was a harrowing story in itself. Once again I feared for my life, three VERY near serious crash incidents. The drive was about an hour long through rural Egypt.
The first thing I saw was the beautiful garden in front of the home. A very nice home; the largest I have seen in Egypt by far. There is a full time cook, house cleaners, and a gardener. The house lies in front of a very sophisticated tilapia farm.
The hatcheries are made of cement with plastic covers. The plastic covers create a greenhouse effect dramatically raising the temperature. This allows the Tilapia to thrive in winter, normally their growth would slow and they would not spawn. While this temperature increase is great in winter it is very uncomfortable in summer. Inside it is probably 110 degrees with 70 percent humidity; instant sweat.
After the tour Dr. Ishmail’s son in law Mohamed, who is also a dentist, took me and showed me how to artificially spawn catfish. This is pretty nasty but it’s easy to do and the results are amazing. The first step is to get however many female catfish you need, then get 1/3 that number of males. Then massage/squeeze all of the females’ eggs out into a bowl. Next the males; this requires surgery. While the females survive the operation the males do not. It is important to keep the male catfish alive as long as possible, unfortunately for the fish. To keep the male catfish relatively calm during the operation, keep him upside down and his eyes and sensors covered. While holding the fish tightly, cut a three inch incision along the soft belly of the fish. Next, remove both of the gonads and place them off on the side. Holding the gonads above the bowl of eggs, stab and squeeze the gonads until you get the sperm all over the eggs. Then add water to the bowl of eggs and carefully mix it all together. You must work quickly because the sperm are only active for 30 to 60 seconds. Now just leave the eggs in warm water and you’re done.
Natural spawning means you just put some males and females together and let “the magic” happen. The reason people go to the trouble of artificially spawning fish is you get nearly double the fertilization, meaning twice the fish, and hopefully twice the money.
The reason the male fish must be alive for the operation is because later you can cut open its brain and remove the pituitary gland. If the fish was killed early in the operation the pituitary gland would decay quickly. The pituitary gland can be mixed with saline water to crate a fish hormone injection. This pituitary gland injection can be given to female fish to make their eggs ripen faster. This allows the fish to be spawned on the peoples schedule rather than the fish’s.
At 4PM we harvested one of Dr. Ishmail’s Tilapia ponds. When I came to the pond the water level was already so low you could see most of the fish. The previous Tilapia farm I worked at had plastic covers along the bottom of the ponds, these were muddy bottoms. This allowed me to observe the results of normal Tilapia spawning procedures. The male fish had half spherical holes in the bottom of the pond. In these holes the females would lay her eggs and the males would fertilize them. I assumed many of the Tilapia would be caught in these holes as the water level dropped, Dr. Ishmail told me that they would not because it is in their nature to find adequate water.
The worker dragged nets along the bottom to round all the fish up in a round pen. Then a worker got in with the fish and began to scoop them up in basket nets. The fish were then placed in a trailer pulled by a tractor. Once this was finished the fish were taken to a sorting station and graded into their appropriate sizes. I was surprised to see that no matter how small, all of the fish are sold.
I just found that Dr. Ishmail and Mohamed are leaving the farm to go to Alexandria this Friday and Saturday weekend. They asked me to come with them to Alexandria and I was thrilled to accept.

Catfish gain almost 1 pound for every pound of food they eat
Tilapia gain a pound of every 1.3 to 1.7 pounds of food they eat
Beef gain only 1 pound for every 10 pounds of food they eat.