 |
| Image shown at 100% of actual size |
|
SUNDAY, JANUARY 21, 2007
Blowfish make good eating
By PATRICIA SMITH
DAILY NEWS STAFF
ATLANTIC BEACH - Capt. Jim Willis of Atlantic Beach recalled a day, just after Triple S Pier was built in the 1950s, when everyone was catching blowfish.
Many, believing the fish were poisonous, didn't want to keep them, but they didn't want to throw them back either. After all, nobody wanted to catch the same one again.
Willis went home and came back with a basket.
"I got me a solid bushel basket of blowfish, brought them home and cleaned them and had myself a meal," Willis said.
These days Willis probably would not be so lucky. Most anglers no longer give away blowfish, also known as puffers, named because the fish will inflate its body with water, and sometimes air, when threatened.
"When they found out how good they are to eat, they started keeping them," said Jack Burrows, of Bogue Inlet Fishing Pier in Emerald Isle.
"People fight for them," said Larry Jenkins, shift manager at Sportsman's Pier.
"We have some groups that come down strictly for puffers," said Ken Compton of Triple S Pier.
In the past four years Burrows has worked at Bogue Inlet Pier, he has seen the puffer's popularity increase.
People found out by word of mouth.
That's how Harold Williard of Morehead City was convinced to try blowfish for the first time last week.
"We used to give them all away," Williard said.
His neighbor liked to eat them and Williard wanted to try them, but his wife, Marva, refused to prepare the fish.
"They look like a frog to me," she said. "They've got beautiful green eyes. I could see those eyes staring at me."
One night when Marva Williard cooked sea mullet, a neighbor agreed to bread and fry some blowfish for her husband.
Harold Williard said he tasted the two fish side-by-side and preferred the blowfish.
"It's just a pretty white meat, like a chicken breast," Williard said.
Seth Shoe of Otway said a blowfish is better tasting than flounder. And it has only one bone, which is more like gristle, he said.
"I always heard the things were poisonous," Shoe said. "I bet I threw away a million of them until I started eating them two years ago."
There is some confusion as to whether or not the Atlantic northern puffer is poisonous, according to an N.C. State University Department of Food Science Web site that answers questions on seafood safety.
Many species of puffer fish are poisonous at varying levels.
The fugu, caught in Japan, is so toxic that it can be prepared only by trained and licensed chefs. If not prepared properly, fugu can cause human deaths. And it has.
However, some reports indicate Atlantic northern puffer, which make up most blowfish catches in North Carolina, is not poisonous, the Web site states. Other reports say the Northern puffer does produce a lower-level toxin in the skin, liver, gonads and intestines.
The Web site recommends thoroughly cleaning the fish before eating it.
What is clear is that many people have been eating the Atlantic northern puffer for years with no apparent ill effects.
In 1940s and 1950s, a lucrative commercial puffer fishery existed in Chesapeake Bay, said Lewis Daniel of the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries.
The fish were marketed then and now as "sea squab," he said.
The fishery died out because the fish went away, possibly through a natural population cycle, Daniel said. That population cycle may now be on an upswing, which could contribute to some of the recent resurgence in popularity of the fish, he said.
State estimates of recreational fish catches show that average yearly puffer landings from 2000 to 2002 were more than double the average of the three previous years.
Still, some anglers do throw the puffers back, Burrows said.
"A lot of people don't know that they can eat them," Daniel said. "They don't know how to clean them."
Daniel recommends cutting behind the fin and through the gills until the head is almost but not completely off. Allow the inside organs to spill out. Then take a fork, bend the fish at a 90-degree angle, and stick it down into the backbone. Using the fork as leverage, peel back the fish skin.
Shoe recommended using gloves, as the skin has a sandpaper quality to it.
Most blowfish catches from the piers come in the cooler months - some at the very first of spring, but more in the fall, Jenkins said.
Pier owners reported fishermen catching blowfish this past week.
Original publication date: 3/22/05
|
CURRENT SURVEY QUESTION: