I recently returned from a working trip to Bangladesh
where I traveled to the interior of the country with several other
Hawaii residents.
The first night of our visit there, our hostess,
Minara, served an enormous fish for dinner.
"Delicious," I said, as I helped myself to
another piece of flaky white meat. "What kind of fish is
this?"
"Rui," she said.
"Do you know the English name?"
She shook her head. "Sorry."
The next evening, Minara served another big fish,
equally good tasting.
"This one we call catla," she said,
explaining she raised them in her pond. She asked if I were interested
in fish, and I said I was.
"Then tomorrow I will take you fishing and you
can tell me the English names."
And so the next morning, I went on one of the most
unusual fishing trips of my life. We went to her aquaculture pond, about
half the size of a football field, where she instructed several men to
drag a net across the pond.
At first, it seemed as if such a move would easily
clean the pond of all its fish. Not so. I was astonished at how high
these bulky, 5-pound fish jumped from the water to avoid the net.
The fishermen, however, were accomplished in their
technique and eventually landed one rui and one catla.
I stared at the quivering white creatures, covered
with large scales. Everyone watched me, waiting to hear the English
names. It would be a long wait -- I had no idea what kind of fish these
were.
Later that week, we returned to the capital city of
Dhaka, where I spotted a poster on the fish of Bangladesh. And there
they were.
The first two species pictured were our fish.
However, they were labeled only by their scientific names, Catla
catla and Labeo rohita. It wasn't until I was leaving the
country that I learned the type of fish Minara was raising.
In a book called "Wetlands of Bangladesh,"
I read that rui and catla are the two local, major carp. It surprised me
to discover that those great-tasting fish were carp, since this family
has such a bad reputation in the U.S.
Carp, introduced to North America from Asia in the
19th century, thrive in sluggish streams and turbid ponds, especially
those containing large amounts of organic matter.
Because they root around in mud, which is often
polluted, they aren't usually good to eat. But our Bangladesh carp, fed
rice husks in clean ponds, were another story.
Like Africa's tilapia, these hardy species are ideal
for aquaculture in areas where the fish are native and the water is
clean. It's human pollution that gives carp -- and tilapia -- a bad
name.
Before I left Dhaka, we had dinner in another
Bangladeshi home. When a plate containing a big fish passed my way, I
asked, "Rui or catla?"
"You know Bangladeshi fish?" our surprised
host asked.
I smiled. "Only the carps."
