Frankenfish

Coming from Hawaii, I obviously like seafood. Because of that, I try to keep up with all of the trendy seafood news more than I would keep up with other not so important things, like politics or what drug test(s) Lindsay Lohan is failing now. So you can imagine what I was thinking (hint: it was “huh?”) when I read this story.

Now genetically modified organisms have been a subject of debate for awhile. On one hand, you could get more out of the animals and feed everybody in the world. On the other hand, you could start sprouting tentacles from your back.

Now as a person who was asleep for a large portion (99%) of the only genetics-related class I ever took, I’m a little foggy as to how this whole genetically-modified stuff actually works. I mean when you read the story it sounds like they just put three different species of fish in the water, turned on some Marvin Gaye, lit some candles, turned out the lights and waited for things to get freaky. A friend told me they use DNA splicing or something, but that doesn’t sound nearly as fun. Unless maybe the scientists are listening to Marvin Gaye and saying “Oh yeeaah” in really deep voices while they are splicing.

Regardless of how it happens, we do know what we end up with. The “frankenfish” is twice as big as a normal salmon but takes half as long to mature. Personally, salmon is my least favorite fish, but if this whole experiment means that when I order a salmon filet I get a huge chunk of meat the size of Snooki’s poof then I’m all for it.

In fact, I say they start making other genetic changes to animals. Like they should make fish that have legs and can walk around on land so that the darn state of Colorado can actually have fresh seafood. Not chunks of tuna that have been frozen so long that you could use them as dry ice. And don’t try to tell me that Colorado has fresh fish. Catfish and tilapia are not fish. They eat dirt or something because that is the texture that they have when you eat them. I don’t trust fish that swim in rivers. People pee in rivers and throw rocks in there. I much prefer the ocean, which is much cleaner, at least when BP isn’t dumping oil into it.

They should also breed fish without bones. I mean, I’ve watched fish in aquariums and I still don’t see what they need bones for. Jellyfish live in the ocean don’t need bones, and frankly if all I had to do all day was float around in the ocean (which actually describes me on my breaks in Hawaii) I think even I wouldn’t need them. This way, I would not have to work around bones when I try to eat fish. As an official lazy person, I don’t like food that requires more calories to eat than you get from actually eating it. This is why I rarely eat crabs or pistachios.

While genetically modifying animals opens up a world of genius possibilities such as the ones I have proposed, it also opens up a can of worms. (Haha get it? Worms? Because you catch fish with worms? Oh never mind. You people have no sense of humor). Every sci-fi killer animal movie I have ever watched has begun with scientists experimenting on some sort of animal, and trust me, I have watched a ton of these movies. It’s normally all I do on weekends.

Because of these movies I have a natural distrust of scientists. For one thing they never experiment on cute, cuddly, non-threatening animals like koalas. No, they experiment on sharks and crocodiles and generally things with large teeth. The next thing you know, large killer animals are eating women running around in bikinis that are somehow bulletproof (the animals, not the bikinis). I always yell at the screen “You idiots of course the killer animal is going to escape its small cage! Now it’s going to go and terrorize a group of students on spring break and eat the minorities first but somehow make the two main characters fall in love!”

These scientists are saying that all this genetics mumbo jumbo is safe, since these fish are apparently engineered to be sterile. I guess this should mean that the possibility of large killer salmon terrorizing the South is low (and praise the Lord, there is already a movie about that very scenario). But I don’t care if they are supposedly sterile. Marvin Gaye can get anyone in the mood…