My mate Kotuku, rang last night, to ask about salting a kahawai for bait.He was going to eat it but found the liver to be green, ? anyone know what would cause this ?
On all livers, including humans, there is a small sac, this is called the gall bladder. It is best to gut the fish and try not to break the sac as the contents are quite bitter, but should it leak the green stain it leaves can be washed off or trimmed from tainted flesh.
If your buddy likes to eat fish liver (I certainly do, along with fish roe) then it pays to take extra care, remove the liver whole then with careful use of the knife, remove the sac.
Should the sac burst it makes no difference to the fish whatsoever, it is still very edible.
Guys, please be careful. Bile can't be washed off because washing spreads it round. Bile is known to contain dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella. Not all organisms have gall bladders, check out the liver of deer, horses and wallabies. They dont have gall bladders. It may be that some species of fish dont either, but be carefull how you remove the gall bladder so as to avoid spills. Besides, fish cleaned immediately keeps better and tastes better. Trim the liver fast and it too will remain edible longer. Tight lines, PhilipTight Lines, Philip Takapau
Hi Phillip, in my very early years, part of my apprenticeship was being trained as a poulterer, now there's a trade that has passed into history. When dressing poultry, drawing them as it is sometimes called, the giblets (offal) was always given to the customer for stock or soup.
Giblets consisted of the neck, the crop, the heart and the liver. Believe me a chicken's liver is a sod to deal with, and it was a regular occurrence for the gall bladder to split. Then a simple wash under fresh running water was all that was needed to remove the bile, in all those years and thousands of chickens, I can say we never had one complaint. Several people died of food poisoning but they never complained about the chook they had been sold. The death was always put down to fowl play.
This will expain the reasons why some fish have a green or clear bile .
A few months ago I was dissecting California killifish to survey their liver parasites and noticed that there was a lot of variability in the color and size of their gallbladders. I mentioned this to my awesome collaborator, Ryan Earley, whose lab I was visiting at the time and it turned out that he had made the same observation years earlier while working with convict cichlids. Among the many things he studies in his integrative animal behavior lab are the mechanisms underlying aggressive behavior and the physiological implications of aggressive interactions. He had the particularly cool insight that social stress (like getting picked on a lot) may affect digestion and may therefore be affecting gallbladder characteristics.
When an organism is stressed out its body diverts energy away from functions that are non-essential in the short-term (like digestion) to more immediate needs (like having the energy to put up a good fight). If energy is diverted away from digestion for a long enough period of time, then you may be able to see differences in measures of digestion between individuals who have established themselves as socially dominant versus those who are subordinate.
The gallbladder stores bile produced by the liver and will release this bile into the stomach, where it aides in the digestion of fats. When the gallbladder doesn’t release bile for a long period of time, the retained bile concentrates (causing it to darken in color) and accumulates (causing the gallbladder to enlarge). The gallbladder may be retaining bile for 2 main reasons: 1) Stress is diverting energy away from digestion and is suppressing the release of bile from the liver, or 2) The stressed individual is consuming less food, so the trigger that the gallbladder uses for when it will release bile is faint or absent.
To determine if the variability in gallbladder size and color were correlated with social stress, Ryan arranged encounters between convict cichlids in which one fish was sure to establish dominance over another fish because of differences in body size. He also needed to differentiate between whether changes in gallbladder size where due to physiological stress responses or were because subordinate individuals were being denied access to food by dominant individuals. To accomplish this, in one of the experiments Ryan supplied so much food that the dominant fish ate all it could stand and returned to its refuge, leaving the subordinate fish a chance to eat however much it wanted.
The results were clear. Subordinate individuals retained more bile which concentrated over time, resulting in large, green gallbladders (check out the paper for pictures!). Dominant individuals, on the other hand, had smaller gallbladders filled with colorless or hay-colored bile. This effect was seen even in the experiment in which subordinate individuals had plenty of access to food, suggesting that changes in gallbladder function are the result of stress suppressing digestive functions and not because of a lack of food to stimulate the gallbladder to release bile.
One of the implications of this work is that it may help us to understand how stress may play an important role in the formation of cholesterol gallstones. When bile becomes overconcentrated it can form solid stones, which cause immense pain. Ryan’s work suggests that social stress may be a factor in gallstone formation! This is bad news for anyone experiencing lots of social stress, but good news in terms of our understanding of the environmental factors involved in gallstone formation.
One of my favorite things about this study is that it’s a great example of how fish work can be relevant to humans. Fish and humans share similar mechanisms for dealing with stress, so the results from fish studies can shed light on how humans respond to stress as well.
now also spoke to a Chinese/Koren friend about eating bile - if you can get past the broken English reply its not good for you......
Contains a huge fish gall bladder bile poisoning toxin can not easily be damaged by heat or alcohol; even steamed fish bile or bile wine blunt the fish will still be poisoning. If rescue is not timely poisoning, can cause failure of various organs within the abdominal cavity, leading to death. Therefore, bile can not eat fish. Fish bile poisoning, mainly fish bile contains substances harmful to human caused. Poisoning, gastrointestinal symptoms first appeared, liver, kidneys are damaged, can cause liver and kidney failure and death. Among them, the most common oliguric acute renal failure, scholars have statistics found in fish bile poisoning deaths accounted for 91.7% of this type. Therefore, please do not raw fish gall dwellers! Also do not eat cooked fish bile as well. Otherwise, no eyesight, the first dead! Warning: fish bile poisoning we eat herring, grass carp, common carp, silver carp and pomfret, with its fish bile have some toxicity. Some people do not understand this, often taking the fish gall to treat chronic bronchitis, hypertension, and eye disease, could easily lead to fish bile poisoning. Fish gall bladder bile composition toxicity is mainly the damage effects on human cells and tissue amines contained in the sensitization. Fish, whether raw or cooked food gall bladder, can cause poisoning, fish poisoning, gall bladder bile volume and number of related. Rapid onset of fish bile poisoning, dangerous conditions, high mortality, intoxication level and age, sex and season the lack of specificity. Fish bile poisoning is very short incubation period, generally 30 minutes after eating disease. Clinical manifestations are nausea, abdominal discomfort, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, occasional melena and other gastrointestinal symptoms. Toxic heavy, there may be hepatomegaly, jaundice, liver tenderness, facial edema, and oliguria, proteinuria, hematuria and anuria, back pain and other symptoms of urinary system. Some have myocardial damage, there fast heart rate, cardiac enlargement, heart failure; some patients irritability, convulsions, coma. There is no fish bile poisoning cure treatment, only symptomatic treatment: 1. Vomiting, gastric lavage, catharsis, which is the preferred method of poisoning, the only way to stomach as soon as possible discharge of toxic substances to reduce the absorption of body toxins. 2. Protection of liver and kidney function, oral or intravenous glucose, and a large amount of vitamin C Glucurolactone liver and other drugs. 2. If there is shock, poisoning patients should be allowed to supine, head slightly, and rushed to hospital for treatment.
on 5/6/2013, 12:42 pm
