RE: hagfish

It seems that my response got lost in the ozone.  I was just advising that there have been several Korean involved, projects along the Washington and Oregon coasts to harvest hagfish.  To the best of my knowledge, none of them have been very successful, particularly from the fisher’s point of view.  Moving quality requirements and uneconomical end prices have been the biggest problems.  Steve Harbell (harbell@wsu.edu) of Washington SeaGrant, in Raymond, WA might have some better information as one of the fisheries was out of the Raymond/South Bend area.

 

Other than that, hagfish, other wise known as Slime Eels are a rather messy and disgusting critter to haul from the briny deep.  Five gallon plastic buckets are often modified to serve as traps for them, and as their name imply they are known for producing a prodigious quantity of slime when they arrive on deck.   Even Greenpeace would have a problem loving this one.

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From: Ray Swanson <rswanson@foothill.net>
To: seafood@ucdavis.edu
Subject: hagfish
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:34:17 -0800
>2/1/07 I received a inquiry from Korean company who is looking to
>buy live hagfish . Can someone direct me to recent studies on
>hagfish as to catch, handling, and processing . Thanks. RS
>