One more day of teaching and I am headed home, but today I popped my head inside the marking trailer and had a couple of conversations with the trailer manager and the marking staff.
These trailers are so amazing. Until SEP purchased the first marking trailer, we could only clip and tag a proportion of the fish we were releasing, now we can mark entire production lines at a rate of 60,000+ a day with each trailer. Handling is limited, the machines do it all. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s pretty accurate and generally very humane.
The fish are crowded in their container, a fish pump pulls them up a hose and into a reservoir in the trailer. The computer sorts and allocates them across the six marking lines. As the water flows down the chute, a fish will drop into a little holding spot. The computer identifies where the adipose fin is and drops a small cutter down to remove it. The fish then slips down a little farther to a spot where its nose is against a marking cone, and a closed wire tag is implanted. The computer then releases the fish and it flows out an exit hose and back out into a rearing container.
It must be a weird experience, probably akin to what one hears of alien abduction.
If fish talk, it must be an interesting conversation when they pass back into holding.
