First off, three cheers for Viet Hoa, the Vietnamese food market on Cleveland Ave in Memphis. I’ve been searching for a source of fresh, uneviscerated, marine fish in this mid-continental city for quite a while, and I’ve finally found them. The market was the source of the subjects of an excellent anatomy lesson, and a delicious dinner.
I’d grabbed three fish, and a few goodies, and packed them on ice on the day before our trip. The large red snapper was a little pricey because it was fairly big, but I knew it would be quite tasty and I was hoping the internal organs would be big and clearly visible. The milk fish was an unknown, but it was big and cheap so worth experimenting on. The last fish was the smallest, and I’m not quite sure what kind it is, except that it’s marine. I’d tried one at home the previous week and found that while it had an excellent taste, the internal bits were on the small side.
Red Snapper
On the first night of the immersion I started with the biggest fish, the red snapper, with everyone around the table. I’m happy to say that all my students were there for the lesson, facing the table, even the more vegetarian minded. I’ve always believed that there is a certain, necessary, ethic to knowing where your food comes from, and what went into preparing it for you. If you’re going to eat meat, you should be able to spare a moment to think about the animal.
The digestive system was the easiest to identify and trace. The mouth and anus are pretty obvious on the outside. After cutting through the skin of the belly, you can follow the intestines from the anus all the way to the stomach. The intestines are quite long.
We found two partially digested, shrimp-like creatures in the stomach of the red snapper.
From the other end of the digestive system, once you get all the contents out of the body cavity, you can stick a probe through the mouth (watch out for sharp teeth) down through the esophagus to the stomach.
Pulling back the gills, you can see all the way through to the mouth. One student noticed how bright red the gills were, so we talked about oxygenation of blood and compared the fish’s gills to the human respiratory system.
Judging from the fish anatomy diagram on the La Crosse Fish Health Center website, we found the air bladder (tucked in the center right next to the spine), the liver, the kidneys, and probably the heart. We pulled them out and photographed them.
Baked Fish Recipe
Finally, I laid the fish on a bed of thinly sliced onions, surrounded it with wedges of tomato (seeded), covered it with lemon slices, dribbled a tablespoon of olive oil on top, and forgot to add the cup of white wine (which we did not seem to have on hand for some reason) and the bay leaf. It was a big fish so we ended up baking it for about 40 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then we ate it. I say we, but it really was just a couple of students and myself who did most of the eating, although I believe I convinced everyone to at least try it. Of the more serious students of anatomy, the eyeballs were highly prized; with only three fish we did not have enough to go around.
By the time we were done with dinner the skeletal system was very nicely exposed.
The Other Fish
A couple of my students did the honors of cleaning the other two fish. With its large organs, the milk fish was an excellent subject for dissection, but it was not particularly palatable. We did however find the gall bladder.
Even the smallest fish proved a worthwhile subject for the more patient student.
Instead of eating the rather unappetizing, baked milk fish I combined it in a soup with some clams I’d picked up from Viet Hoa. I’d grabbed the clams so we compare modern bivalve shells to the cretaceous ones we’d find at Coon Creek. A bit of boiling with a few herbs, made for an excellent broth the following night.
In Summary
Cleaning fish for an anatomy lesson worked very well. As we excavated each internal organ, we could talk about what it did, why the fish needed it, and what was its analogue in humans. And, in the end, they made for a couple excellent meals.
P.S. – From the Gulf Coast Research Lab’s Marine Education Center, here’s a reference image for a perch dissection.
