Undersized Supermarket Fish

Hi all,

I was in a leading supermarket the other day and asked if the bass was farmed - the guy behind the counter said they were wild. However on closer inspection maybe 1 of the 10 or so on the counter were above the legal size. When I pointed this out to him he quickly changed his tune and said he was mistaken, this lot were farmed, the previous ones he had were wild.

So the question is - do farmed bass have a minimum size limit, or can they sell them at any size?

In Ireland, commercial bass fishery is illegal. If bass are sold wild, they must be imported, and above the EU limit of 38cm (Ireland is 41cm). However, I pursued this with Tesco, and while the fish counter salesperson claimed they were wild, the central customer relations dept confirmed they were farmed. The fish counter at Superquin told me that they were not allowed to sell bass above a max of 38cm.

I may be wrong, but I'm not uncertain.

However, if wild bass can be imported and sold, how can they be certain that they are not caught in Irish waters?

I may be wrong but I can't imagine that a major supermarket chain would risk selling wild Irish bass. I am sure all fish are farmed, either way its easy to tell a farmed fish from a wild fish. A wild fish has concentric lines on all its scales the distance between corrosponds to each year to its life. A farmed fish does not have this as they grow at a uniform rate. If in doubt take a few scales from around the lateral line of the fish and look at them under a magnifying glass or better still a cheap microscope. You get tell a lot of information about a Bass from the scales, age, year of birth, good feeding years bad years etc...
Better still you don't have to kill fish to find this out, its worth gathering this info as you will build up a picture of the Bass that frequent your patch. I know from experience that we get an influx of southern Bass in May to Sept which are much bigger for their age than the Bass you get all year around. Also the picture seems to be changing with the increase in water temperatures over winter.

I too have enquired and have found out from a shop in Howth that they are farmed in Turkey - legal sizes a re therefore irrelevant.
Striped Bass Ive seen have come from Eygpt - info I received from the fish market Belfast.

FWIW
Gillaroo