Fish Identification Techniques

Sitting on the side of the Naparyarak River, which is just up river from Hooper Bay, filleting fish after fish for the winter is a joy and hard work! It also leaves a sore back the next day, but the job gets done. After removing the head with an ulu, we cut open the ventral side of the fish, remove the fish’s organs, flip it on the other side, cut the back and separate it from the backbone, and then finally make the fish lines in the fish. I have had quite a bit of experience working with fish and each time I am going to remove the organs I am always wondering what part of the fish it is, or what fins are located where on the fish. Here at the Ellikarmiut Summer Science Camp we currently are taking the following classes: Anthropology 100x, University Communications, and Introduction to Fish Biology and Fish Techniques. In the Fisheries Class I am learning a lot of where and what parts of the fish are where and what they are used for, which is why I am highly interested in identifying both external and internal anatomy of a fish. I am especially interested in salmon in particular because I have continuously seen basically the same ventral and dorsal sides of the fish both externally and internally. My curious longing to identify what I have repeatedly seen has now become a base of my knowledge.

Shown here the body cavity is open, and the swim bladder is exposed and looks silver along the spine. Also shown is the isthmus which is the V-Shaped opening on the chin of the fish.

Florence Nukusuk

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Summer Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.