Dancing With the Cannibals

    Last night Sandra and I went to the Valentines Day Buffet and Music Fest, a benefit for the graduating high school seniors, at the Kona United Methodist Church.  You may be thinking that this has absolutely nothing to do with fish identification, but if you just give me a moment, your honor, I promise that I will demonstrate the relevance.

Dancing With the Cannibals

   As you may recall, over fifty percent of the congregants up at our house of worship are either Samoan or Tongan.  For those of us that are neither, festive evenings such as the Valentine's Day Benefit provide a window into their lives.   In this instance we were entertained by the Tongan choir, a well dressed group whose music sounds more like opera than something from the South Pacific.  As a counter point, both the men and women from Samoa performed dances in what we must assume was traditional attire, accompanied by raucous shrieking.  If one closed his eyes, one might have thought he was at a rodeo.

Opelu at the Cleaning Station  Kailua Bay, 2013

   Dinner, which was donated by a small group of local restaurants, was preceded by hors d'oeuvres.  The Big Island Grill nor Sammy Choy's had nothing to do with this portion of the menu.  The appetizers featured a platter of chunks of fried fish.  As many of you know, I will eat almost anything, so I took a couple chunks.  I asked a Samoan friend who was nearby just what this fish might be and she said it was opelu.

   Out on the reef, we delight in seeing opelu.  They are a small, fast moving fish of the mackerel family.  Opelu occur in small schools, each individual zig zagging, regardless of his fellow's course.  They boast bodies of sky blue and tails of yellow; assuming that they are not excessively talented, they could play for UCLA.  

   When I got my pre-dinner repast back to the table, I deduced that these small fusiform fish had not been cleaned, but had been chopped into cross sections about an inch in length,  lightly breaded and fried.  My two portions were oily, had a surfeit of small bones and a remarkably fishy taste.  Isn't it paradoxical, that when we use the term fishy to describe the flavor of a fish , we do not mean it as a compliment?  If one is lucky, an upscale fish, salmon and ahi tuna for example, will have no "fishy"

Could be opelu.  They certainly look "fishy".

taste.  I have had trout that were virtually tasteless, which, as it turns out, is vastly preferable by comparison to those opelu. There is no amount of chardonnay that would have improved this situation.  

   Loving these fish as if they were my brothers, I felt like a bit of a cannibal.  And so, as a fan of the opelu in their natural environment, swimming fast and free (not unlike that Samoan woman who could not be restrained from dancing with the men) I am thankful that they are so genuinely "fishy."

Jeff