A rapidly grabbed picture
because I was supposed to be involved here in getting the
fish out of the net and the fact I was taking pictures
instead meant that I was having a break instead of doing the
same uncomfortable job that my friends were doing. As
our fish needed to be alive and in good condition we had to
take care in extracting them from the nets and they seemed
to have an awful lot of little hard protrusions and bits for
the net to get caught on.
It was a skill that you had
to develop as a fish biologist, removing a sometimes very
tightly caught fish with fingers that were at least half
numb and getting worse. Very unpleasant at first, but of
course, you got used to it and it was usually better to just
carry on with fingers that at half worked than to keep
warming them up which just made it worse.
Paul Ward -
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