Moving Day

Day 20 June 10 - Moving Day

Today’s main event was the selling of fingerlings to a neighboring farm. Many of the local fish farms are much less advanced than Dr. Ishamil’s. They do not have the know-how or facilities to keep a brood stock, collect eggs, hatch them, feed them, and make them all male. For many of the other farmers it is easier to just buy inch, to two inch long fish. Dr. Ishmail makes even more money at the end of winter when he is able to sell babies when most of the other farmers cannot get their fish to reproduce because of the cold.
It is a pretty simple process but it was done so quickly and efficiently I was very impressed. It was obvious Dr. Ishmail already had this process planned when he had the farm built because the holding area was the perfect size and in the perfect location. In the fresh (unused salty water) canal there are concrete barriers the size of nets.
The first step is to catch all the fingerlings out of the green house tanks. The greenhouses are the trick that lets his fish reproduce in the winter. Unlike the harvest, the workers must be careful not to damage the fish. The fish are then placed into nets stretched over the special canal, this acts as a holding tank for the fish.
Next, Dr. Ishmail personally comes over and counts the number of fish in one scoop of the net. Dr. Ishmail feels it is his personal responsibility to ensure that the correct number of fingerlings are sold.
Next a person fills a four foot long by one foot diameter plastic bag with about 2 gallons of water. This bag is then held open for Dr. Ishmail who puts one scoop full, about 330 fish, inside.
It is then passed down the line to a person who inflates the bag from a tank of pure oxygen. This allows the fish to travel much longer distances than if they were simply filled with air. The bags are then stood up in the back of a pickup truck. What is amazing about this procedure is the speed with which it is done. Each bag can be filled, populated, oxygenated, and stacked in about twelve seconds.
The rest of the day was fun, I sat around watching CNN until I found a great movie. AIR FORCE ONE!!! I have been stuck watching CNN and Aljazeera, while entertaining they are both depressing. They make you think that the world is either going to melt, the stock market is going to crash, or world war will break out at any moment. So Air Force One was a wonderfully welcome respite from sensationalist news. My favorite line is “I would turn my back on god himself for Mother Russia!” With the combination of overly done fake Russian accent and the super dramatic music makes it a classic.