meat quality, and process the carcass immediately, before it begins to deteriorate The fisherman has no such mastery over the circumstances of the catch, though the fish farmer has some Harvest from the Ocean There are several common ways of harvesting fish from the wild, none of them ideal In the most controlled and least efficient method, a few fisherman catch a few fish, ice them immediately, and deliver them to shore within hours This method can produce very fresh and high-quality fish — if they are caught quickly with minimal struggle, expertly killed and cleaned, quickly and thoroughly iced, and promptly delivered to market But if the fish are exhausted, processing is less than ideal, or cold storage is interrupted, quality will suffer Far more common are fish caught and processed by the thousands and delivered to port every few days or weeks Their quality often suffers from physical damage caused by the sheer mass of the catch, delays in processing, and storage in less than ideal conditions Factory-scale trawlers and longliners also harvest huge numbers of fish, but they their own processing on board, and often clean, vacuum-pack, and freeze their catch within hours Such fish can be superior in quality to unfrozen fish caught locally and recently but handled carelessly Harvest in Aquaculture By contrast to the logistical challenge posed by fishing, consider the care with which salmon are harvested in the best aquaculture operations First, the fish are starved for seven to ten days to reduce the levels of bacteria and digestive enzymes in the gut that may otherwise accelerate spoilage The fish are anesthetized in chilled water saturated with carbon dioxide, then killed either with a blow to the head or by bleeding with a cut through the blood vessels ...often suffers from physical damage caused by the sheer mass of the catch, delays in processing, and storage in less than ideal conditions Factory-scale trawlers and longliners also... numbers of fish, but they their own processing on board, and often clean, vacuum-pack, and freeze their catch within hours Such fish can be superior in quality to unfrozen fish caught locally and recently but handled carelessly... locally and recently but handled carelessly Harvest in Aquaculture By contrast to the logistical challenge posed by fishing, consider the care with which salmon are harvested in the best aquaculture operations First, the fish