FISH! and MUD! and FISH!

'I could tell you my adventures - beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly: 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.' Alice - Through The Looking Glass

Yesterday was incredible. Mae Tang Fish Hatchery!

So, we arrived around 9am and were in the water by about 9:30.

While fighting to not sink in the mud, we scooped the corralled fish out of their nets with mesh baskets and carried them across the path to their new ponds. The fish were tilapia, ranging from about 5 inches long to a foot long. They’re strong fish! And with hundreds to thousands of them in each net, it was hard work moving them! After we emptied and tore down all the nets in that pond we used a net the length of the pond to do a sweep of the entire pond. It took all 30+ of us to walk the length of the pond holding one edge of the net along the bottom of the pond while the other edge floated along the surface. This process caught more than just tilapia. We also caught the large carp (by large I mean like 15lbs/1.5ft long) and large catfish (a foot or longer) and moved them to the new pond so the old pond can drained and cleaned.

Lunch was surprisingly enough a main course of tilapia with a sweet chile sauce and rice with fruit after. The fish was sooooo good! After lunch, some song and dance broke out, don’t worry there’s a video.

Back to work! This time we were checking fish for eggs. The workers had done this a couple days earlier so only a couple people found fish with eggs. Overall, the day was amazing! It’s so unreal to think that this is counting as school!