North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Hi all, filleted a barra yesterday and found this (see pic) in the stomach area, anyone know what it is?

Have handballed the link to the parasite expert ....

Was the fillet clean n healthy? If not I would hesitate to eat it, but if the fillet looked ok probably just a stumock bug. Jewfish have a similar bug in their backbone and they still eat fine, no ill effects.

Yeah the fillets looked great, they actually came of a 99cm barra that I had swam for a successful release, to my untrained eye the barra looked very healthy. A couple of minutes later another boat that saw me land it brought the half eaten fish back as a shark had gotten the better of it.

The NT parasite expert has handballed this to a national expert ... the plot thickens ...

Yeah cheers Matt, fillets are in the freezer....

I am pretty sure I was the one that brought that half eaten barra back to you on Sunday.
That fish looked very healthy, very fine specimin indeed.

From fisheries scientist Ben Diggles: "They are tapeworm larvae, pretty common in the mesenteries of the gut cavity of wild fish. They are not even in the flesh, so the fish is plenty safe to eat."