Sorry for the double posted, but I thought I'd keep things seperate for a bit:

I have recieved funds via Paypal. And that will free at least 2 if not 3 cuttles. The money transferred is translates to near 72HKD (including the transaction fee for using Paypal). I will use 72HKD of my money that I have instead of taking it out of the Paypal account so that I don't have to pay transaction fee over and over again.

If all goes well, I will have pics by September due to the fact that it's not cuttle season and school starts on Friday for me, so I might be a tad bit busy till the dust settles.

How much does it cost to free a cuttle?? If I send you money, will you take pics of the one you save and when you let him go? =)

"Eric's SPONSOR A CUTTLE" program sounds nice... You could name the cuttle, and recieve pictures of it, and have Eric release it for a certain price. What do ya think, Eric?

Joey

It's been already a on-going thing. Although it's not limited to cutttles, but anything from fish and cephs to crabs and sharks.and if you want, I'll dump some dead squid in the ocean. ...although that would be a waste of money and food.

Ill donate some funds soon..When my bank account isnt so depleted! =)

"with the cost of a cup of coffee a day you to can sponsor a cuttle!"

how much does a cup of coffee costs anyway?

Thats from a regularly circulating TV ad about sponsering underpriviledged children of poverty in 3rd world countries, but a cup of coffee is about a 1$. But with all the choices available nowadays on how to consume caffiene at local coffee shops, my Medium Iced Soy Vanilla Latte costs around 3 dollars!

how much does a cup of coffee costs anyway?

$0.89 with refills at a diner; If you go to Starbucks and ask "what's the most expensive drink" a Venti White Mocha is $4.50, but with add-ons they came up with a "Venti Soy 4-shot Mint White Mocha" was $6.10, but you can keep adding extra shots and flavors (flavors were $0.30 each, I think shots are around $1). Of course, those prices go up if you're in a "captive audience" place like a conference center or airport...

edit: Paradox beat me to it, but apparently his yuppy coffee shop is a bit cheaper than my local Starbucks. Of course, I think at the non-chain coffee place I go to it'd be closer to $3 as well.

Then yes, a 3$ cup of coffee will probably save a octo or cuttle, provided that it's mid season for octo catching and there's enough that poeple don't find it weird that there's a octo crawling in the middle of the market.

However, 5 is probably a more conservative answer.

...We have the a cup of coffee will save a kid ad too, not to mention 2 trays of dim-sum will also save a kid.

Then yes, a 3$ cup of coffee will probably save a octo or cuttle, provided that it's mid season for octo catching and there's enough that poeple don't find it weird that there's a octo crawling in the middle of the market.

However, 5 is probably a more conservative answer.

...We have the a cup of coffee will save a kid ad too, not to mention 2 trays of dim-sum will also save a kid.

Can I give the kid or the cuttle the chicken feet and tripe as my two dishes, and still eat all of the other dim sum (except the sharkfin soup, which is evil, evil, evil)?

erm, if you want, although chicken feet and tripe are probably the few dishs that doesn't have enough fat to make a piece of bacon look like a salad... and they don't serve sharkfin soup for lunch/breakfast! That's for dinner!

Before this thread gets even deeper into Chicken feet-cuttle-coffee economics I have a question...

How often do you got to the market?

Joey

Depends, currently it's around once a month, but I may go more if I have enough funds and the time to get there.

Now if we could just get Sally Struthers...

probably going to the Market on Saturday, will keep you posted as things progress.

Much apologies to Cuttlegirl and everyone for not responding. Sorry, but I've been busy lately and completely forgot to upload the pictures.
Rest assured, the pictures are somewhere, but just not here at the moment.

Released a small shark and some crabs and other doodads into the water. Costed me around 2 bucks for the shark. The other critters were free. Had a new fish stall try and make me buy a dead squid to "set free", didn't fall for it.

Hmmm.... was it of a dark red complexion, armed with hooked suckers and dito tentacle clubs, and of an overall size to dwarf a London doubledecker bus? :wink:

Next time I need to find wierd pictures of anatomy for sculptures, I'm going to hit you up Eric. I'll sponsor your program to boot, maybe we will even get lucky and get to set free the animal I am sculpting.:grin:

That would be great, I'll see what I can find.

I just wanted to say that I love your attitude. I am an Environmental Educator by training and trade (www.oceanology.org) here in the US and one of my frustrations is how hard it is to develop and foster critical thinking skills. You seem to have both the love (read: burning interest) in marine organisms/systems, and acceptance of cultural momentum that is such a hard balancing act.

I would 2nd Dr O'Shea's suggestion to parlay your interest and knowledge level into a small scale aquarium buisiness. I'd imagine that there are sometimes rarer/more.interesting species for sale at the market. If they would not sell as pets there, they will someowhere. Japan, here in the US. Someone might be interested in them.

Even if not, just gaining the experience would be valuable. The Native Fish Conservancy (www.nativefish.org) here has a program where they provide the material and generalized maintainance and support for local schools and libraries, etc to keep small aquariums with local species. Connecting students with their world and all that. Maybe something small and all of that.


Basically I just wanted to say that you seem to have open eyes, and that is good to see.

slainte
.conal.

I may be going to the market soon, stand by for more as the Weekend approachs.

Below are photos from a while back. The shark is the one which I have released by using the money which a sponser has given me. The stingray/skate was damaged beyond hope, so I just took a picture and hoped that it ends up on a dinner table instead of in the trash by the end of the day.

what a fascinating hobby you have... do you ever come across any jellies? I assume that if jellies are eaten anywhere in the world, it would be in Asia... :grin:
If there's one critter thats almost as interesting as cephs, its jellyfish, at least to me.
I guess I have a soft spot for squishy sealife.

I used to too, then I started scuba diving and noticed how jellies end up everywhere, stinging your face, arms and any exposed skin. But non-toxic jellies are certainly fun to watch.

I'm sorry, no jellies in Hong Kong becuase the nets break them into bits as they trawl about. But during my trip to China, I did see locals use sein nets and net for the occasional jellyfish that would float near the surface near the coast. Fascinating stuff, since apparently, it's a common hobby for kids to go swimming with moon jellies and put them in buckets just for the sake of putting them in buckets. I did try and persuade some of the kids to put them back. 5 Moon Jellies survived to float for one more day becuase of that.

what a fascinating hobby you have... do you ever come across any jellies? I assume that if jellies are eaten anywhere in the world, it would be in Asia... :grin:
If there's one critter thats almost as interesting as cephs, its jellyfish, at least to me.
I guess I have a soft spot for squishy sealife.

You can buy jellyfish pickled in brine here in NZ in Asian Markets, my boss made us all try it :yuck: :yuck::yuck::yuck::yuck::yuck::yuck::yuc k:

I didn't enjoy the experience I didn't enjoy her dried chili crabs or dried lemon cuttlefish either (actually I wouldn't even TRY the cuttlefish, it would've been like eating a family member :cthulhu: :cuttlehi: :shock:)

J

I didn't enjoy the experience I didn't enjoy her dried chili crabs or dried lemon cuttlefish either (actually I wouldn't even TRY the cuttlefish, it would've been like eating a family member :cthulhu: :cuttlehi: :shock:)

J
The cuttlefish of the world thank you! :cuttlezz: :cuttlehi: :cuttlego: :cuttle:

dried lemon cuttle? Never heard of it? Nor the crabs either. Strange. It's probably squid anyway.

dried lemon cuttle? Never heard of it? Nor the crabs either. Strange. It's probably squid anyway.

Nope.........twas a cuttle (they were whole & just some clarification it was lemon FLAVOURED, not a lemon cuttle as in a species!) and the crabs were complete with carapace/legs and chelae. Those I think she picked up in a market in Singapore!

J

I saw some pretty wild stuff in the Nishiki Market in Kyoto last week. The strangest by far was krill sushi: heads, guts, shells and all on top of a little rice and wrapped with nori. It didn't tasted too bad, but it wasn't something I ever need to try again. There was some other brainy, intestinal, spermy looking glob that I didn't have courage to put in my mouth. There was this other thing that one of my traveling companions had, some kind of herring roe that was all in one big pod. Took forever to chew, and was mostly tastless. Fried shrimp heads. The lots of pickled vegetables, some of them didn't even look like food, rather something the Dr. might pull out of a squid stomach and smelled at least as horrible.

Those Japanese love the octopus and squid too. Grilled squid on a stick was really prevalent as well as the octopus balls, which was a little chunk of octopus arm in a eggy kind of ball with ponzu and mayonaise on top. Those were pretty tasty actually.

I also had a really fantastic sausage in Omiya that had a pig rib for a handle. Pretty clever, and really tasty as well.

We had a student studying the local krill (Nyctiphanes australis) and he insisted on making "krill patties", essentially small omelettes stuffed with krill, they were bad, very, very, very bad! Strong flavoured and full of little crunchy gritty bits :yuck::yuck::yuck::yuck::yuck:

never again!

J

We use krill as saturation fishbait...dump the whole box in it and induce a feeding frenzy at your fishing spot. Not really cost effective, really.

Re: Eating kill - I think I've had it before, not the best. But it wasn't bad. Worst thing I've had was cuttle eggs. Tasted like salted coffee. (Salty and bitter) Well, enough about my rambling.

Apologies once again, due to Easter and forthcoming exams. The market was closed down, so no fish. But I promise that I'll go and find something worthwhile to set free the moment I get the chance.

Went to the "Aquarium district" (a.k.a An entire block of LFSs), thought this might make a interesting update:

1) I am offically, a poor man. I looked at the cheapest protein skimmer, looked at my wallet and noticed that I do not even have money for that flimsy, acrylic, DIY-ish thing that probably leaks or somehow collapses at the first sign of usage.

2) Well, the biggest store in the district which has once stocked nautilises have done it again. This time, they put black tip reef sharks (approx 2 feet) and stingrays (diameter approx 30cm.) in a tank that is probably way too small for either of them. Sad things. Then we had 6 or 9 crowie (sp? - the one that has a shiny shell with black spots, contains a harpoon for capturing fish via toxins which are lethal to humans) sitting in a tank too. No pictures becuase they said so (if I can somehow work the name of TONMO and hype it all up, I could probably get away with it...)

Anywho, not much to say other than that I am poor, sharks need more space, pictures are not taken, and well...watch this space. It's the end of the Easter/term break, I'm in the get-up-and-do-something mood.

Be careful! As long as we don't need a "where's Eric" thread. :smile:

Went to the "Aquarium district" (a.k.a An entire block of LFSs), thought this might make a interesting update:

1) I am offically, a poor man. I looked at the cheapest protein skimmer, looked at my wallet and noticed that I do not even have money for that flimsy, acrylic, DIY-ish thing that probably leaks or somehow collapses at the first sign of usage.



If you do frequent water changes, have some live rock and start with a few small fish you should be ok without a protein skimmer. It is best to have one, but most people have had aquariums without skimmers for years before they existed in the aquarium trade.

Then we had 6 or 9 crowie (sp? - the one that has a shiny shell with black spots, contains a harpoon for capturing fish via toxins which are lethal to humans) sitting in a tank too.

I think you mean cone shells, pretty things but as you say deadly. Maybe their twit of a fish catcher will get harpooned :twisted: Would be poetic justice!

J

Cowrie: No mal hombre

Cone: Mucho muerta

Yes, cone shells, that's the one.

I recently discussed an outside suggestion for brissle worm control with a diver/collector in the keys and he says there are some cone's that remain small and are basically no worse than anemones or some of the other stinging corals. If I can validate this, we may do some limited experiments to see if they will help in situations where the substrate is so full of worms that other sand dwellers (like jaw fish) are being negatively effected. If we experiment, we will have to also validate that the sand dwellers won't be consumed (or speared) as well.

...brissle worms, ew. Speaking of worms, this reminds me of a time when me and a few neighbors were out fishing along the coastline. One of them used a worm as bait and well..hooked back a larger worm.
It was ugly, it was big and it looked like a fireworm. We went for the "Pour coke while we look for a stick so we can poke it" method. Had good fun with that thing before it managed to crawl back to the edge of the water.

Ah, that must've been our old friend Allghoi Khorkhoi...

You were all extremely lucky to walk away with your lives :wink:

Mongolian Deathworm?!

http://www.mysterydatabase.com/english/cryptozoology/worm/mongolian_deathworm.jpg

LOL! You learn something new everyday!

..No. More like huge arsed relative of the Fireworm.

Anyway, after an entire day of not sleeping in the middle of my exam period, I have decided to visit the local fish wholesale point.

Most boats seem to just ship in fish from the fish farms off coast, lots of medium sized fish, rock cod, coral trout, groupers, pompanos, juvenile, some blue-water fish, eels and sweetlips and such. I presume that they were farmed due to lack of bodily injuries. There's also smaller rabbitfish and baitfish caught with nets.
Amongst them are crabs and shrimp (possible food source when I keep a octo?) Also, the local fishermen caught a approx 40cm pufferfish, it was HUGE, even though its already dead and deflated.
Ceph wise, not very good, I only found a bag of 5-8 small bimac sized octos in a net. Very neat, they looked very much alive, although destined for the dinner table. Some of the smaller scale fishermen have also caught some interesting stuff, like octos. Judging from the state of the octos, they were frozen in ice water at they were caught, which means that they died a relatively painless death. There was a total of around 40-50 of these frozen octos on sale. Frozen squid in abundance, since there's nothing special, I will not elaborate on it.

Looking to identify the octos in the bag, do you think it would be a good idea to buy a frozen one just to poke around and see what species it is?

I recently discussed an outside suggestion for brissle worm control with a diver/collector in the keys and he says there are some cone's that remain small and are basically no worse than anemones or some of the other stinging corals. If I can validate this, we may do some limited experiments to see if they will help in situations where the substrate is so full of worms that other sand dwellers (like jaw fish) are being negatively effected. If we experiment, we will have to also validate that the sand dwellers won't be consumed (or speared) as well.

Dredging up stuff from the dark recesses of my mind, but are there not two basic types of cone? The fish-eating/highly toxic species with wide apertures, and the worm-eating/not-highly toxic narrow-apertured species? As long as you don't go throwing the likes of (for example, but not limited to) Conus geographus (http://www.gastropods.com/Shell_Images/Conus-Cypr/Conus_geographus_4.jpg) in your tank then you and your fish should be ok, and your worms would be happily munched on.

Dredging up stuff from the dark recesses of my mind, but are there not two basic types of cone? The fish-eating/highly toxic species with wide apertures, and the worm-eating/not-highly toxic narrow-apertured species? As long as you don't go throwing the likes of (for example, but not limited to) Conus geographus (http://www.gastropods.com/Shell_Images/Conus-Cypr/Conus_geographus_4.jpg) in your tank then you and your fish should be ok, and your worms would be happily munched on.

This is true! But I would suggest investigating shell patterning etc BEFORE you pick up the critter to check shell aperture width :grin:

J

...it memory serves well ,it would not be a Geographic Cone. But still highly dangerous, looked like something from Discovery Channel in the top 10 most venomous speices thing.

Anything like this (http://www.schnr-specimen-shells.com/22871.JPG) Eric?

Possibly, my memory isn't all that clear. But it seems pretty close. Probably a bit sharper at the end.

There are so very many species of cone. Not all are a worry/threat to you. Next time if you can take a photo (even if they don't allow cameras in there, sneak your phone in). Most cones are taken and killed for shell collectors; I don't know whether they are worth more or less in the so-called live-animal trade, but I would imagine the live-cone trade market was considerably smaller than the dead shell trade.

Because I utterly screwed up my sleeping pattern with coffee and the inter net, I went to the local harbor/fish wholesale market. Didn't see too many wholesale action on LIVE cephs, but saw entire boxes of frozen squid of all sizes. HOWEVER, on a separate occasion saw "octos in a mesh bag" (mentioned in some post before this one, or have I?) So I guess it's just not "octo season".

Anyway, asides from the dead squid, saw various smaller amounts of other cephs, like dead 3 inch mantle length cuttles and all sizes of octos, frozen.
Presumably locally caught due to the much smaller catch size and much more random animals (I doubt butterfly fish is a main staple in any culture

I bought a one that had a mantle length of 15cm (6 inches?), brown/reddish color and obviously alive in the name of cuttlegirl and TONMOcon II and had them dump it back. People stared and said I was crazy.

Total cost of octo? 20HKD or 2.6USD.

I tried asking a old lady about her bucketful of frozen octos to see if they were caught locally. She refused and said that she was very busy. Shame, I would've paid a large sum to be able to go out and see their fishing operations.

Donations still gladly accepted. ..Sorry, had to say it because my personal "research" funds are running low.

6USD left from Paypal account. (Money still in account, I used the HKD equivalent first because extracting money from Paypal takes like...2USD per transaction.)

I bought a one that had a mantle length of 15cm (6 inches?), brown/reddish color and obviously alive in the name of cuttlegirl and TONMOcon II and had them dump it back. People stared and said I was crazy.


Cuddly thanks you!:cuttlehi:

Since it's summe time, I'm going to see if I could tag along with the fisherfolks if they're going out, I might need some sponsering though, if I can get enough cash, I could probably put up some vids instead of just photos.

Hi Eric

For video, are you concerned about hosting charges? You don't need to be. There are a few sites that host video for free. Blip.tv (http://www.blip.tv) is one.

Melissa

Well, that solves one thing, now to somehow gather enough money to pay for the trip!