Catch of the Day

A huge catch was made today of barracudas, rays and red snappers. I watched them be cleaned and gutted. The ray was difficult to gut because of a huge bone that runs through its core. First the boys took the stinger out of the tail, what a nasty looking stinger. Then we examined its mouth; it has an eerie looking mouth, very human like on the outside. Inside there are no teeth, just cartilage plates. This particular ray had a fish in its mouth. The gills were spectacular, elaborate and very bony. They took up about 10-15% of the ray!

The biggest ray was a blue spotted ray. Andrew held it up and he said it weighed about 30 pounds. It was really rubbery and its center was made entirely of muscle. When it was being gutted this part was really hard to cut so the boys had to cut along the muscle ridge, take the skin off, and then cut the wings off, The rest went to the lizards who all fought over it.

There were two large emperor snappers in the catch. They were red by the time they got to shore but apparently they are greenish when they come out of the water. Snappers change colour when they are exposed to air. Watching the lizards swallow the heads from these two fish was an amazing sight. They are 2 or 3 times the size of the lizard’s own head, but the lizards still managed to somehow get it in. Each of the snappers were probably about 30-40 pounds.

There were also about 5 or 6 barracudas caught today, little barracudas of about 10 pounds each.