Tuna Cowboys

For a long time, I have been visualising how man will one day use a new method of fishing other then the usual traditional nets that we used.

I was watching Net-Geo Channel and I came across "Tuna Cowboys" - for a while I thought maybe some cowboys decided to go fishing... but after watching the show for awhile, I realise why they call it Tuna cowboys.

Simple, the method of catching tuna fish is exactly the same herding cows in a farm accept that its in the sea.

Firstly, they use the same fishing method - purseine net to round up the school of tuna fishes and then instead of lifting them up onto a boat, they just simply herd the fishes into a round netting as you can see in the above picture. 1000-3000 fishes per catch and in that catchment net they can put about 15,000 fishes inside them - ALIVE !!!" Once they are satisfied with their catch, they will just drag the whole net catchment to the harbour with all the fishes alive. By the way, I am not talking about small fishes.. but big tuna fishes of 5-30kgs per fish. The whole routine to round up the fishes and drag it to harbour takes about 2 months.. and the hard and agonising part is the dragging of the fish catchment to harbour at a very slow speed and takes about 1 month to reach harbour.

Now what do they do with the fishes after that?
They will be place into fish farms at the harbour and further let them grow even bigger sizes before they are sold. Hundreds of millions worth....

Hard labour and innovative method...at minimal costs.
What a great way to fish...


And it's not without danger, when you have a school of trapped fishes, predator sharks will break into the nets to prey their food and that's when the tuna cowboys goes to work of getting the sharks out of the net and mending up the nets.

Purse Seine net fishing method

Even as a fish trader for so many years, I have never seen this fishing method before but only imagine how it's done... Well one thing is that inorder to witness it we have to go out to sea with the fishermen inorder to really see one. I doubt I will ever have that chance to be on one...for one I cannot stand when the boat wobbles, I will get sea sick. hehe..
Now looking at the picture I know why they call it a purse seine net... becos it looks like a purse turned upside down as the pull the net the bottom of the net will close like a purse and when they pull up the net, gravity will work its way zipping up the bottom and up parts of the net and all the fish caught inside will be hauled up onto the boat... brilliant idea... :)

My favorite dish

Everytime when I am in Jakarta, this dish is a MUST - sashimi lobsters yummy yummy..
Serving the lobster sashimi is very important to us, I mean me and my partners in this fish trade. When we visit a new place, we will call the cook to our table first to brief him exactly how to serve it. firstly the knife must be a special one, very sharp and cut them into thin slices but not too thin or it will drop when you pick it up with a pair of chopsticks so it has to be thick enough to hold and thin enough so that it sort of melts in your mouth.

Just dip a piece into wasabi with the Japanese sauce... wow.. the taste is special.. The plate has to be served cold with ice, but the meat MUST not touch the ice so a layer of plastic will be place on top of some crushed ice and the meat laid right on top the ice separated by a thin piece of plastic sheeting. After a few dinner trips with them, you will never take lobsters any other different way.

This method was served to the Japanese prime minister when he came to Bangkok some years ago. Since we tasted it this way, we have been asking cooks all over the place where we dine to prepare them this particular way. You can really taste the delicacy of lobster meat in its finest form.
I just couldn't find a sliced lobster serving in the internet, but just to give you an idea what I meant by a piece of plastic sheet with crushed ice below and the sliced lobster meat on top. The meat must be translucent when served, if the meat touches ice, it turns white as they say the ice water will cook the meat and spoils the taste of a real raw sashimi lobster :) hehe


The picture below is also sashimi lobsters but the meat is chopped too big a slice infact it's not even in sliced form but in chunks, when you take 2 to 3 pieces, you will have a funny feeling of taking too much raw meat.. while those in slices you can take as many as you want, you won't feel it.
and oh.. the lobster head, claws, legs, tails all goes into lobster porridge served as the last dish before we call it a night... yummy yummy... :)
but make sure you have enough $$$ to order a lobster sashimi of this size at a 5 star restaurant - 3,000,000 rupiah (rm1,000++) and with all other dishes, our bill usually came up to 4-5 million rupiahs for a table for 6-8 people.

Goat fish from Indonesia

Yellow-striped goatfish (Mulloides vanicolensis, Parupeneus chrysopleuron)

Goat fish - this species is yellow-striped goatfish, I wonder why they call it goat but I suspect its because of the pair of protruding feelers making them look like goats.

These species are supposedly found in the Indo-pacific regions as they swim around in rocky reef areas. It certainly has gain popularity in Asian dinner tables as tons and tons of them are frozen and exported to Japan and China.

Stinking money

Fish trading has been one of the oldest business and til now it is also one of the lucrative ones. But it also means odd hours and stinking environment but not to this lady lying on the bench taking a nap hehe.... her fingers and hands are covered with gold rings and bracelets which means she is rich. "ya eastern tradition - wearing gold means wealth"

What you see in the picture above, if we were to calculate the total value of the whole market place with fishes traded all over the floor and drums. It could run into billions of rupiahs
What you see here are the workers, labourers and fishermen but the information of the volume will be related to their bosses and transactions made via phone and emails and banking been done in the nice office somewhere else and further linked to the global trade via traders like me who will further export them through out wherever there is a market for a certain species.

Sea Breams controversy

Trading in Sea breams, one has to be very careful. If you have no experience then you are bound to have problems when you sell it. In Indonesia they call it Kuniran. Some clients wants single glazing while some may require double glazing. Glazing means soak the frozen fish in cold water and you will see an added layer of glassy covering on the fish for protection against damages during handling. Double glazing... well probably to cheat on some added water weight to the fish hehe...
Now there is another thing about sea breams is the yellow stripes. As you can see in the picture, the fishes have some yellow stripes on the body and some sea breams do not have stripes. And when the yellow stripes reaches their heads, they are the best and most favoured. The difference in prices could be as high as 50% difference.

And all sea bream traders uses the same code KK, K , KP.
I don't know what they mean but I know KK means the yellow stripes reaches the fish's head while K means the body has yellow stripes and KP means no stripes at all..
Rather complicated isn't it hehehe.

Sharks from Prondong

My work basically is to visit every fish harbour or jetty whenever we visit a new place. Here is Prondong, somewhere near Surabaya in Indonesia. Sharks are never sold as one whole fish, very obvious, the fins and tails are very expensive and are reserved for special buyers. So at the market place, they chop them up and sells the meat while the fins and tails are collected and sold separately at a very much higher price.. for shark's fins delicacies. There are many different type of shark species some white, some dark colored ones.

Fake white pomfrets

Have you ever heard about "fake" white pomfret?
well here it is above, it looks exactly like white pomfret but then the skin is yellowish in color. I have not tasted it yet. At first we thought probably they kept it too long in the coldstorage and it turned yellow but it seems no... it is already yellowish even in their fresh form. We found them in one of the factories in Lambongan, near Surabaya on the eastern part of Java Island. mmm probably I will import them to Malaysia to try it out one day...

Live Squids from Pangandaran

I never like squids before until I tasted these in Pangandaran, south central Java, Indonesia. There is no need for any special ingredients to cook these...

The speciality of these squids here is that it's so fresh infact live when they were cooked and it's so tasty and delicious. But the problem is to go to Pangandaran is 8 hours drive by car from Jakarta.. the only way unless you want to take the foker plane. There is a small landing strip there belonging to my friend.. right along the beach. Well, I would prefer going by car hahaha.. the last tsunami have damaged all the houses and left the beach vacant so the best thing to utilise it was to turn it into a landing strip...

Blue fin tuna

Blue fin tuna.

This is a highly prized fish for sports and it's one of the most valuable fish in the ocean. And it seems it's almost close to extinction. It is also one of the largest species of fish in the ocean. It can grow to a length of more then 10 feet long and weighs over 1,500 lbs

Blue fin tuna are found in all warm and temperate oceans and they can move far and wide. It could swim at a speed of more then 30 miles an hour. They feed on smaller fishes.

There has been called to ban fishing on this species before it goes extinct. The EC has closed the Mediterranean bluefin fishery to EU industrial fleets, two weeks before the season ends, at least this is one way to salvage some of them from extinction.

It is very important for fishermen and all those in the fish industry, everyone knows an extinction means the end of that business as well. To preserve them is also to preserve your business. But there will always be those who don't care - The ignorant ones and the greedy ones.

More serious measures includes boycotting blue fin tuna from the retailer side, such as restaurants and chefs is underway in most countries all over the world in a desparate scheme to salvage this fish from extinction.


sashimi blue fin tuna
a mouthful could wipe out a specie

The most expensive fish in Malaysia.

This is the most expensive fish in Malaysia and is only found in Sarawak. It's called the empurau fish and it cost rm500.00 per kilogram. I tasted the fish only once at my friend's restaurant in Selayang Jaya. Never tasted fresh water fish that good.. hehe.

The picture was taken from PhotoMalaysia by one of the photographers and he said that the fish weighs 25 kilograms so it means that fish costs rm12,500.00 in the market.

You may say it's crazy, but in Japan, some tunas cost a few hundred thousand dollars. And yes there are people still willing to pay for such delicacies.

Malaysia is banned from EU

Most marine product processors in Malaysia are aware that it's a matter of time this ban will come. And it has. Many 3rd world countries have been banned before accept Malaysia. Why was Malaysia banned this time. It seems our factories are not up to EU health standards in many areas.

According to various sources, Malaysia was lucky when the demand for marine products from Europe was high, many of our Malaysian processors were approved for EU health standards leniently without proper inspections. Our ministry just approve all the medium and large processors inorder that we can cater for the huge demands. Liniency is the culprit that we are banned this time.

A blessing in disguise?
Now with the ban, it's time our Malaysia companies shape up and improve our real standards in marine product processing. We are way behind some of our other Asean partners in terms of quality service and quality products. It's a fact, why would we spend money to improve and upgrade our facilities when are already EU approved factories?

From now extensive upgrading has to be done inorder that we can get the approvals of EU standards. Malaysian firms will have to spend billions of ringit in upgrading.

Welcome to fish.net.my

Welcome to http://www.fish.net.my/ blogging community.
Created on this day, the beginning of a new era in Asian global traders like me. As I foresee the future of fish trading will eventually be all online. There are still many of us, the remnants of a few old timer fish traders who are computer illiterate. Now the next generation is gradually taking charge, so it's about time we shift gears and move into the world of Internet. My first initial target is to get all my clients, suppliers, trading partners and my wholesalers and retailers into one common place and share our experience and expertise. As I believe, trading nowadays, there is no more secrets but an open market, gone are the days of middlemen trading and probably auctioning will be a new way of trading eventually. The future is supply source to the market place. - Direct selling

Hopefully, more traders will join in or lose out in the race..