Parasite/Worm ???

Does anyone know what this is?  This was found in the fillet of an Olive.  There are some big ones as pictured and some small ones as well.  First I thought it was blood clots but after closer examination it was discovered not to be.  I didn't see anything like this in the Vermilions.

Thanks,
Jae

OMG

Prepackaged Bacon bit?
I've seen worms in rockfish and they aren't deadly; just cut them out.

Looks like it belongs at the bottom of a tequila bottle.

Mmm tasty!

That is extra protein you are wasting there cook it and eat it! 

Mmm tasty!

That is extra protein you are wasting there cook it and eat it! 

 

You may also see small, raised circular areas in the lower abdominal wall of rockfish.  If you lift the peritoneal lining ( the glistening membrane) you will find a tightly coiled up slender light pink worm.  If you lay it out it may be as long as 1 1/2 inches long.  You can easily cut them out.  I think they travel directly through the gut wall and lodge in the abdominal wall.  I don't think they spread via larval forms to more distant muscles.  But I must say I haven't looked to hard for them outside the abdominal area.

So it looks as though no one knows exactly what this is.  Anyone seen similar in their fish?  Is it really safe to eat after taking it all out (or trying to take it all out - probablly not worth it since there are really small ones too).  If I cook it, will it get crunchy (bacon bits)?     I didn't have chance to look thru the abdominal wall - and probablly don't want to - got sick after finding these...

pink coil parasite? i found a few green coils in the fillet of a ling i got recently and got rid of them, thinking that was it. made ling head soup, had half of it, then found a few floating in the soup too...  ... threw out the soup right away... i must have eaten some of them but still haven't notice any sickness yet, but just knowing that i could have had some is making uneasy...  . now, i freeze all my fish at least a night.

then again, i think all things we eat will have some kind of parasites. we just don't see them.

More worms:  I guess a lot of these fish are susceptable to worms but some may be more susceptable than others.  I was out at Monastary Beach last weekend and caught a limit of rockfish, some gophers, blues and quite a few starry red rockfish.  I found that the starry rockfish clearly were the most likely to have the coiled up worms and were the most heavily infested.  It was the same two weekends ago when I also got a limit out of Monastary.  There were more coppers mixed in, but the starry rockfish again were the most heavily infested. 

When I cleaned the starrys on Sunday, one had a gullet filled with a black, gritty, tooth-paste consistency gunk.  So I wonder what it was feeding on, but if they gulp  stuff off the floor, maybe that's why they pick up so many worms.  I didn't find many in the blues that I cleaned.

I picked out the obvious coils and cooked a batch Sunday and Monday.  But when I pulled the remaining ones out of the fridge tonight there were a lot of worms that had come out and were now on the surface.  Kind of turns you off aesthetically even if they are harmless to eat.

Anyway, if you like fish with less worms you might target fish other than starrys.  Interested to know if others have made any correlations with them as well.

Almost all fish have worms/parasites of some kind.  Trim out what you can see, cook it, and enjoy.

  There is a reason the sashimi list is as short as it is...and some of the things on "the list", like salmon, still commonly have worms so have it prepared by someone that KNOWS what they are doing.

I found this one in Bill's ling from HMB. Thanks Bill

It's the first I ever found in a ling.

here's a pic.

Like Sean said, nematode worms are in most fish.  Rockfish, lingcod, halibut, cabezon and to a lesser degree salmon.  These parasites are waiting to get into a marine mammal (or bird?) to reproduce.  They are not in a mature stage until they do.  They coil up and "wait" in the muscle tissue.  According to Milton Love down at UCSB (he's a rockfish expert and author of that huge rockfish book) certain areas will have certain species which seem to have more parasites.  Which means that while one area has a high concentration of worms in one species, that doesn't mean that it will be that way at another spot.  Also, the older certain rockfish in certain areas are, the more worms/parasites there might be.  Sometimes I've caught huge blacks (5-6 lb.) and no worms hardly at all, other times in the same area, caught more big blacks and they were all loaded with worms.  Usually if I've kept the fish, I'll clean the worms out (not letting my wife see) and freeze those fillets, then cook them.  The nematode worms are absolutely harmless if frozen or cooked thoroughly.  The possible result of eating a nematode worm if it was alive is having it cyst in your head or upper body muscle tissue, but that shouldn't happen because you've cooked it thoroughly or frozen it.  All my information comes from Dr. Gary Hendrickson, fish pathology professor at Humboldt State University who used to always say, "Rockfish or lingcod ceviche/sushi/sashimi probably isn't the best idea going."

Alex, why do you think I gave it to you, I thought those where Phillipino delicacies... 

http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/05/06/29/how_many_insect_parts_and_rodent_hairs_are_allowed_in

According to this article the FDA estimates that we eat approximately 2 lbs of critter parts a year on average. Let's see that comes to about 8 quarter pounders at Mcdonalds and probably alot healthier for you. Welcome to the MADNESS and as I have learned don't sweat the small stuff just make sure it's well cooked