Fresh-water Drum: Also known as Sheepshead and Croaker.
Flesh quality highly variable. Fillets are thin relative to the width of the body.
Size is also variable with lengths from 10" to 18" being common.
Fresh-water Drum range map
Notable for being one of the few species of native fish that can effectively eat invasive Zebra and Quagga Mussels. Freshwater Drum are able to gnaw ZM and QM off of hard substrates due to the arrangement of their teeth.
One would think there would be a significant effort to stock them in waters within their native range.
Grass Carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella)
Fast-growing,
invasive Asian species. Eagerly consumes seaweed, grass-clippings, even
the partially digested vegetation in cow and horse manure.
Not particularly efficient in converting nutrients to flesh.
Nutrients that escape cause algae blooms which can feed Silver Carp.
Production, million metric tons, Chinese fresh-water aquaculture, by species
Currently the most common species in Chinese, freshwater aquaculture. Chinese aquaculture often uses many species (as many as 10) in the same pond to capture all of the paths in the trophic curve and to hedge risks. Grass Carp is often grown with Silver Carp.
Silver Carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix)
Fast-growing, filter-feeding, non-native (i.e. invasive) fish that unlike most "carp" lacks the floating bones that are difficult to remove by filleting.
This is one of the carp species known to "jump" when startled. They weigh up to 80 pounds (although 20lb is more typical). Smacking one of these while water-skiing is life-changing.
The current belief is that they cannot reproduce in ponds but require rivers with flowing water.
Chinese poly-culture exploits the algae bloom from Grass Carp feeding to feed the Silver Carp "for free".
Joyce and Shannon sauntered back to the branch an hour after lunch was scheduled to end. Shannon felt washed out, almost naked wearing her new, Joyce-approved color palette.
None of the other staff appeared to notice their tardiness or Shannon’s new face. Fred gave them a wave and Shannon and Joyce opened up their window.
The effect of the new face was marked. No more stink-eye. Most of the customers immediately warmed up to her. It was a revelation.
When they closed, Joyce watched as Shannon counted and reconciled her till.
Fred then had her puppy-dog while he went through his shut-down procedures. “We are big on cross-training here. We are a small shop and with these open farm fields we get a lot of snow drifting. No telling who will be able to show up when we have a blizzard.”
The drive home held no appeal to Shannon. She had a vague impression that Heller’s house might be closer so she entered his address into the mapping app on her smartphone. He lived 17 miles and 20 minutes away.
She needed a hug.
Ten miles of Interstate, five miles of state-highway and two miles of gravel road and she was pulling into his driveway.
She shot him a text “When are you going to be home?”
A minute later he responded “Be a couple hours”
Well, crap. Now what?
Lacking anything better to do, she changed into the “grubby” clothes she kept in the trunk. Looking around she found the riding mower in the shed, checked the oil level like her dad had taught her. Then she mowed Heller’s yard. That took a whopping half hour.
She texted Heller “Where do you keep the spare key. I can have dinner waiting for your”
He replied “The door is not locked. Just let yourself in”
It took Shannon a while to figure out Heller's kitchen. It was not an organized workspace. He had enough food in the refrigerator for tacos, a bit of green-salad and he even had a couple of ears of sweet corn in there. Shannon would make it work.
She was looking for a knife when she found the "junk-drawer". She was just about to close it when a picture caught her eye. It was a just-expired, student ID that had belonged to a red-head named "Stephanie Metzger". She felt guilty when she popped it into her purse. Clearly, Stephanie was going to need it.
Walking through the door a half hour later Heller said “I stink. I gotta take a shower.”
Then he sniffed the air. “Boy, that smells good.”
“Don’t use all the hot water. I need a shower too” Shannon said.
“That is going to be tough. I don’t have a very big water heater. But I will try to hurry” Heller said.
A couple of minutes after hearing the shower start running, Shannon turned off the stove, skinned out of her grubby clothes and joined Heller in the shower.
Later, over a cold dinner, Shannon said, “I wish I could stay the night but I don’t have any clean clothes.”
“That is easy enough to fix” Heller said. “I’ll drive.”
And just like that, Shannon found herself back at her apartment. She picked out four days’ worth of work and causal clothes. Minding Joyce’s advice, Shannon didn’t pick form-fitting clothes but chose looser fitting blouses and pleated skirts for work.
On the way back Heller said “I didn’t mean to rush you. If you think this is too fast, you can sleep in the other bedroom.”
“I think we are past that point” Shannon said. Yes, it did seem to be going fast but it felt right. Heller didn’t play games and give her all kinds of tests. He was a black-and-white kind of guy. Shannon was his and he was hers. All the other stuff could be sorted out.
This video is interesting because it illustrates a low-input, highly-productive (in terms of labor invested) form of aquaculture in a very severe environment.
It is easy to invent a multitude of food production schemes that have negative net energy return on energy invested. This method, as illustrated, is one of those BUT simply changing from motorized vehicles to foot-transport would flip it right-side up.
That cannot be said for most other schemes after you make a rigorous effort to include the energy costs of ALL inputs.
As a simple frame-of-reference, Com-China subsidizes their deep-sea fishing fleet to a tune of twenty cents per pound of edible fish harvested. Twenty cents of oil has the equivalent of 11,000 dietary calories. A pound of fresh fish has about 400 calories. So looking at just the government fuel subsidy, there is at least 27 times more energy invested in deep-sea fishing than is harvested.*
Thumbnail description of fishing method shown in the video:
120 villagers travel to a nearby, shallow "lake" on the taiga. At one end of the lake they use chainsaws to cut two 4'-by-6' holes in the ice and they use spuds to break a series of holes between the two large holes. Then, after lashing poles together, they pass a line from small-hole-to-small hole to join the two large holes. Then they drag a seine between the two large holes.
The seine might be 8' top-to-bottom. The bottom is weighted and the top has floats. The two large holes might be 100 yards apart.
Then the 120 people go to the opposite end of the lake and by various means (sticks thrust through holes in the ice and banging on the ice) herd the fish to the end of the lake with the net.
Count them if you can.
Roughly counting the number of bags, the 120 villagers appear to harvest in the neighborhood of 3600 pounds of fish-on-the-fin. Given the time of year and the latitude, they probably did not invest more than six hours of time per-person. That works out to five pounds of fish per person per hour on-task.
You can attempt to count bags of fish at the 9:50 mark of the video.
Issues:
Looks like it might be a river. You can see three lines of villagers on the left-center of the image
Seines are different than gill-nets. Gill-nets trap fish by size while seines form a purse and then the ends are pulled together. That pre-supposes the seine can be set in some kind of loop. It is unclear how the loop or belly in the net is achieved. Perhaps there is a slight current that causes it to sag? Perhaps they run a line perpendicular to the center of the net run and pull it back? Not clear.
The timing of the venture is critical. The ice needs to be thick enough to hold a hundred people but thin enough to pop many, many holes through it. The ice appears to be about 4" thick. If the ice is on a river it can be very tricky to estimate when the ice is safe.
The water is stained with vegetation (peat) so the fish will have a "boggy" taste. Not a problem if this is what you grew up with.
Range map Crucian Carp
The fish species is Crucian Carp which has a very northern range. Crucian Carp can survive anaerobic water because they have a metabolic mechanism that creates energy by converting reserves to ethanol which is excreted via urine. Goldfish share this mechanism which accounts for their ability to survive in small fishbowls.
Fish-kills on ice-bound ponds is very common when snow blocks the sunlight. Algae is unable to photosynthesis and decaying organic matter consumes all of the oxygen dissolved in the water.
Crucian Carp is considered one of the best carp for table-fare.
Yield
A review of literature suggests that 30 pounds of fish per acre per year is near top-end for low-input aquaculture. Take that number with a large grain of salt because it varies wildly by location.
The Yakutians never harvest a lake more than once every three years. Working backwards, that implies the lake was at least 36 acres. On the video it appears much smaller but if it was a river then the fish could have congregated in the deep holes which would facilitate catching them.
Those numbers seem improbable, given the northern latitude, the low pH and the general hypotrophic water but carp are at the bottom of the food-pyramid and soils washed into the lakes by erosion can increase nutrient loading. So maybe the numbers work out.
Summary
It an interesting video but it leaves me with many questions
I like the social nature of harvesting resources in this way
Their methods are knocking-on-the-door of being net-positive-energy and it is an efficient way to harvest protein, a nutrient that is often expensive to collect or grow.
I admire the ethic of only harvesting once every three years although that may have more to do with fish size than an inherent conservation ethos
Tangential to the video, non-sporting methods-of-take are illegal in many places because they are TOO efficient. Fly-fishing looks great on a calendar but is not as efficient as netting or trapping fish.
* $2 Billion fuel subsidy per year and 15 million metric tonnes of catch per year. 1/3 edible fillets per pound of catch. $75 per barrel oil. 32 million BTU per barrel. Please feel free to double-check my work.
The cows are in Sprite's back pasture. She graciously agreed to let me put them there for a bit.
I appreciate her generosity. The last time the cows were back there they followed some deer through a "dead" section of the fence. Sprite had one of the neighbors tell her that "her" cows were out.
Sprite took chase.
She put a handful of gravel into a coffee-can, the only container close at hand. She played Pied Piper and convinced the not-so-smart cattle that the rattling container was filled with corn and she led them back to my pasture. She led the across a road and then through a quarter-mile of soybeans to get them there.
I spent a bunch of time fixing the fence before asking to put them back there. I will check it a couple of times tomorrow to make sure it is sound.
My best guess is that there is 100 cow-days of forage there if they grind it down to dirt. It should be obvious that they will eat the best forage first and eat the poorer quality forage later.
The raptors love having the cows in that pasture. The cows expose the mice a little at a time and make it easier for the hawks, owls (and coyotes, fox and feral cats) to harvest the field mice.
Baby food runs about $5 a pound. Bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots and such run about a dollar a pound. Food from the garden is essentially free.
Quicksilver is going through a quarter-pound of "baby-food" a day. It is a tough economic case to make for the baby-food maker if you only plan to have one baby.
There are other factors to consider. If you are anti-packaging then the baby-food maker avoids most of them.
The big thing for Southern Belle is that she wants to expose Quicksilver to far more kinds of foods than shows up in commercial baby food.
Good-to-Go
Butternut squash (from garden)
Peas (Stiff poop that is hard to pass)
Green beans
Sweet Potatoes (huge favorite)
Carrots (diaper blow-outs, avoid serving alone)
Avocado
Cauliflower
Beets (Runny poop. RED!)
Spinach (Stiff poop)
Red Sweet Peppers (favorite)
On-the-list-for-future
White potatoes
Rutabaga
Yucca
Parsnips
Tomato
Asparagus
Broccoli
Brussels Sprouts
Zucchini
Green Pepper
Eggplant
Quicksilver's pediatrician recommends feeding vegetables early and fruits later. Once they taste fruits, which are sweet, it is an uphill push to get them to eat vegetables.
The game-plan is to feed a new food for four days with no other introductions. If there are no adverse reactions, then it goes on the approved list.
The grumpy part of me grumbles that we used to smash up foods with a fork. The baby-food maker steams the food and then purees it. Southern Belle tells me that the unit is MUCH easier to clean than our huge, ancient blender.
Grocery store report
No shortage of frozen pizzas in Eaton Rapids. I am not sure they could have stuffed very much more product on the shelves.
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