How Do Commercial Squid Fishers Kill The Squid They Catch?

[glen]

Hi everyone,



I was recently asked a question (by email) relating to how commercial squid fisherman typically kill squid and whether the practice can be considered to be humane.



any help would be appreciated.



cheers, glen

[Steeny]

I would assume its just shoved onto ice and is in no way considered humane.



this would keep the squid as fresh as possible for the longest possible time.

[sheep]

There really is no humane way as wether right or wrong if you picture each fish is money for the crew/boat/skipper, if you had to kill every fish that came aboard it would not be long before your vessel is up for sale as those few sec's doing it would cost maybe another line of fish.. <img src='http://www.squidfish.net/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':th' />

[madog]

Killing them is not the job of the fisherman, in my opinion and experience, you catch the squid, or fish or whatever and keep them as lively and happy as possible to command the best price. The actual killing of the fish is left to the buyers, or processors, we just facilitate.

[glen]

hi madog. do you keep them in tanks of water on the fishing boat? is it a lot of work to keep them alive?



cheers, glen <img src='http://www.squidfish.net/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/xyxthumbs.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':woot:' />

[madog]

Yeah, we started trying to fish squid commercially a few years ago. I use a small boat and most of what we did was experimental, so we just kept the squid alive in a cooler. Not a whole lot of work, just dumping a bucket of water over them now and then. If we got more serious about this we would set up a tank with a recirculatiion pump to keep more of them alive.

[scifly]

Jig caught squid in South Africa are packed in trays and snap frozen. Freezing is considered as one of the most humane ways to kill fish and other organisms. Trawl-caught squid are often dead by the time they come to the surface depending on how long the trawl goes for. Interestingly experiments and research involving cephalopods requires special animal ethics approvals in Australia so it seems cephalopod biologists (your's truly included) have done a really good job in persuading others just how important our tentacles friends are! <img src='http://www.squidfish.net/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/innocent.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':th' />

[glen]

hi len, thanks for the info and welcome to the forum!



cheers, glen <img src='http://www.squidfish.net/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/xyxthumbs.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':th' />