Brett's Fish Farm

The Prince and I

by Brett Rowley

nce upon a time, there was this big catfish farm and processing plant in Southeast Texas. There was also a big fish hatchery and many people working at all three. I was the boss and chief fishery biologist of the fish producing aspects of this outfit. It came to pass that a certain prince, his Highness, Prince Akishino of the Japanese Royal family, was to be in Houston for a festival. Now this prince wasn't just any old royal prince, but a highly educated ichthyologist and President of His Majesty's Country's Aquarium Society. The thing that the prince wanted to see more than any thing in Texas, was a big catfish farm. The prince being an aficionado of the catfish family of fishes. The prince so wanted to visit, and was so very anxious to get it worked into his busy schedule, that I knew for weeks he was coming.

This wasn't just any old catfish farm either. It had been built as a "vertically integrated" operation. That's fancy talk for self contained, or many aspects of the entire operation from egg to fillet were conducted at that location. We had a hatchery that produced 33 million fish per year, mostly channel catfish, some blue catfish. We had rearing ponds to produce fingerlings. We had growout systems that were state of the art, 200-acre, recirculating, filtered production ponds. We had leading edge processing facilities, both manual and mechanized. It was something. More than 4000 acres of land and over half that in water. More than 3 acres of indoor hatchery and adjacent fish processing plants with two big water wells and its own waste water treatment plant. Over 100 people working in the plant, 30 on the farm, 25 in the hatchery, and a dozen up front (in fancy, air-conditioned offices) that didn't work (much). Anyway, I digress.

The prince got wind of all this and wanted to see the place. Once the people up front got notified of that, I was given the job of preparing the hatchery and farm for a visit by a prince. As it generally worked out, all those high paid people up front didn't really understand fish production very well and wanted me to also be the guy that showed the prince around and answered His Highness' ichthyological questions. In most similar operations there is a similar fellow, usually known as the "trained monkey". That was me. But I digress.

The assistant consul for Japan in Houston was my contact. We got together and discussed things. We had a lot in common. I had never got ready for a visit by a prince before, and neither had he. He made it clear that this was his first big job and if it went well, he would be a made man. If it didn't go too good, he might be looking for something else to be doing. Nothing like a bit of pressure to get me going. We proceeded to get ready to be fixin' to receive a prince. After a bit of trying to second guess what would please the prince, we came up with a plan.

After hacking out a basic plan, the assistant consul and I began to hone it to a fine edge. "The prince will then come and stand thusly for 23 seconds as I explain how bighead carp (one in front of us in a tank) are used to filter the water," and then "he will walk by this path to the next tank and stand as such until I explain the intricacies of paddlefish life history for another 27 seconds." We had it rigged for the hatchery crew to bring in catfish egg masses from the spawning ponds and receive them into the hatchery, treatments, washing, the whole bit...three minutes and 14 seconds. We had practiced each step in front of the tank, trough, machine, pump, incubator, or whatever else we thought he might want to see. After about three weeks of this every day, I think we pretty well got it. Shame the prince didn't, but that's a bit further on in the story.

We had a platform for the press to stand on. We had managed to catch every fish that was halfway interesting a put them into tanks in the hatchery a few days prior to the Prince's arrival. These included a 20 pound bighead carp, a 90-lb blue catfish, several 15-lb channel catfish, rows of fry and eggs in the hatchery, a paddlefish, and lord knows what else, even a few (I know now) bad koi. We were ready.

When a Japanese Prince comes to a Texas fish farm, it's a big deal. They closed the main artery from here to Houston (State Highway 288). The entourage consisted of loads of police motorcycles and cars, limos, regular cars, and looked like a New Orleans funeral. The Consul and Texas Agricultural Commissioner, Rick Perry, escorted Prince Akishino and several other folks into the building that held the hatchery. It wasn't hot that day, but I was sweating like I'd just helped load 30 tons of catfish onto a live haul truck. I glanced over at the assistant consul, hid out in an inconspicuous corner, and saw I was dry compared to him.

We first went to the processing plant, where the prince was to spend 25 of his precious minutes. Instead of our normal routine, the plant was humming, and more was going on than I'd ever seen: there was a Baader 184 fillet machine running (one of those complicated machines that you put catfish in one end and fillets comes out the other), while right next to it girls were filleting fish by hand, fish heads being sawed off and riding out the auger. Fillets were being injected with tri-poly (an industry trick to increase weight that I'm not supposed to tell you about) and being flash frozen seconds later. It was really something.

Prince Akishino stuck his head in the door, took a quick look and turned away, ready to visit my hatchery. The plant manager was crushed. The assistant consul was horrified. I was panicked--my crew wouldn't be set up and ready for another 24 minutes and 41 seconds!

Radio to the rescue! While the plant manager stammered something about "He didn't even get to look at the vacuum eviscerator" (I called it the gut sucker), I was thinking that if there was ever a time to pull a cat out of the bag, this was it. Once I rid myself of the image of the assistant consul seeing his life flash before his eyes, I came up with a quick plan B. I moved over a bit out of earshot and fired up my trusty Motorola hand held radio and called Cindy. She was coordinating the hatchery "show" with an egg gathering crew of local high school boys and a hatchery crew of ethnically diverse individuals, mostly a bit or a lot past high school. "Kick it into high gear," I told her, "I'll stall while you get 'em moving."

Now Cindy was one of those big, fiery red headed girls about 15 years older than my egg crew. Usually easy going, I'd seen her put the boys in line when I figured it was time to reconsider the work-study program. Like the time nobody showed up one day to gather eggs, the next day when they were all ready to go, I just had to ask one why they were no show, no call the day before. "Oh, we figured you knew" said Dee, "No" I replied, "I haven't a clue". "Well" he replied, "Surf was up, dude". One of the pitfalls of living and working on the coast, it never was a problem after they had a talk with Cindy. Don't know what she told them, don't want to know. Or the time the night crew almost burned down the hatchery--a concrete and metal building full of water--with 16 ounces of Coca-Cola. But that's another story.

To buy time, I slowly led the prince and rest of the group over to the water reservoir that received the well water and served as part of the water distribution system for the hatchery. I went into a long discourse on ground water, dissolved gasses, heavy metals, and such. To my surprise, the prince perked up a bit and began, in a soft voice and slight British accent, to ask relevant questions that not another person in the room understood. At first I was surprised by his and then warmed to the fact that I actually had somebody to show off my hatchery to that understood, a rare occurrence. We had a lively discussion on water quality and chemistry and how I had managed to tweak the water supply to the point that eggs actually hatched and baby catfish grew in it. Our planned one minute and 12 seconds at the water supply had been parlayed into nearly six minutes!

Meanwhile, Cindy was hustling boys and fish eggs in from the field at breakneck speed. Well, the John Deere buggy she drove around in actually didn't go that fast, but it was going as fast as it ever did. She was still several miles away, but had radioed ahead that they had eggs and were coming in peddle to the metal. Still stalling, over to the tank with the big blue cats we went.

The prince's eyes widened at the site of those monsters and had to know all about them. He got an even bigger kick out of the paddlefish and wanted to know all about the program I was involved in with the state on paddlefish. By the time we had got to the redfish tank, Cindy was sneaking into the back of the hatchery.

We migrated to the egg receiving area to watch the eggs being brought in as if we'd timed it that way. The prince was once again fascinated and wanted to know all the details of each step. We went to incubation troughs, rearing troughs, the scales we count fry and eggs with, hand dip, net dip, you name it, we covered it. Which created a new problem: by the time the prince was set to go out to the ponds, we were about 30 minutes behind schedule. The consul was scowling--seems the prince was going to miss meeting with the Mayor of Houston or somesutch other bigwig that was important to stuff like trade relations and such. The prince, however, was beaming, and the assistant consul seemed to actually have gotten a bit of his natural, dark, Japanese color back. The prince didn't look worried, so I wasn't worried either.

Outside, I had Stan, the feed man drive the feed truck up and blow feed into the pond of catfish we were next to. We put out as much as 40 tons of feed a day, for those that never saw one, a feed truck on a catfish farm is a big truck with a hopper and a blower on it. The blower (18 hp Honda) blows feed out a chute and into the pond about 40 feet or so. It can put out as much as 500 pounds a minute. Well, that day was a bit windy and the feed actually didn't blow out into the pond too good. Instead, it blew all over the prince and the group with him. Lots of dust in that cheap catfish food. Anyhow, the whole group smelled of fish from that point and they were all pretty much disgusted, except the prince, he was smiling, seemingly amused by the discomfort and concern of his important entourage. We coulda died, but the way he smiled made it like a joke him and me shared. To this day I still don't know if he honestly didn't care, or did that to save us face. But I digress.

The prince went back to the office, and I to the hatchery. The people up front, you know, the ones in suits that don't work (much), had gift exchanging with the prince, a diplomatic process that trained monkeys are not allowed to participate in. During that up front activity, the assistant consul (having about as much stroke with his group as me with mine) and I talked a bit in the hatchery. He told me he could tell that the prince was very pleased and everything had ended up OK even after it seemed like it was going to be a huge disaster. Then the press descended on me for interviews and such. I could tell that the assistant consul was thinking about which prestigious Japanese University his yet unborn kids were going to attend. I got sent out on AP and UPI and who knows what else, my picture with my buddy the prince was sent coast to coast, and around the world. I heard from folks that I hadn't heard from in years. It was some kind of day. A good one.

Last revised 20 December 1997