AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums The Cayes Ambergris Caye Eating Barracuda

Knowing a little bit about seafood and reading about you guys eating cuda, I decided to post this.
Cuda contain ciguatera. This is a toxin produced by dinoflagellate (a single celled alga) found on coral reefs. These toxins accumulate up the food chain as small fish get eaten up by bigger fish. The toxin causes no harm to fish and is not even detectable in their flesh. When a human eats it though it starts out like simple food poisoning like nausea,vomiting, and diarrhea. Then the neurological part kicks in. These can lead to numbness of your hands and feet to a coma. I personally will never eat a cuda but for all you out there who do make sure it is under 5 pounds. The bigger the fish the worse the toxins. I am not using this board as a scare tactic, but I feel you should know about this.

Hey Zeke, learned a trick in Grand Cayman about Barracuda to tell whether or not it's safe to eat, don't laugh, but slice some up, refrigerate all except a piece and stick the leftover piece in the sun, if the ants eat it, all in all should be safe to eat, if ants don't eat the Barracuda, forget about it, throw it all out. I know it sounds silly and I'm no fish expert, but I thought I'd throw my two sense in. See you and the wife at BC on Thanksgiving - gobble, gobble!!!!

Becky....You can eat the cuda that you are sharing with the ants. Think I will have the turkey without the ants thank-you. Ahhh, who am I bullshitting......I will be DRINKING Wild Turkey on Thanksgiving at BC's! Screw the ants because I know they'll f--king drown if they screw around with my bourbon.

Becky....if you throw in your "two sense" you are in deep shit. Throw the monetary "two cents" instead!LOL

You crack me up Zeke, see you all in November. Never did get into Barracuda. I myself like to try wahoo and Dolphin (no not Flipper, I mean Mahi-Mahi). Are you guys doing any fishing down there in November or just drinking?

I would not worry about ciguatera unless the local reefs are known to contain contaminated fish. The problem seems more reef specific than fish specific. You can get it from any large predator fish that feeds off of smaller reef fish (including the ever popular Grouper).

However, barracuda have caused the most documented cases. Probably because of their preference of hanging around a reef and eating the reef fish more so than other predators who visit the reefs.
http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~mow/chap36.html

Boy I sure am not the sharpest pencil in the pencil case, two sense. Good catch Zeke. LMAO here again. I'm kinda slow in the mornin.

Thanks for the tip...I had heard the same thing about 'cuda, but we were assured it was safe to eat...lo and behold, it was the best damn fish I ever ate! We caught 3, 2 were large (over 5lbs) and 1 was small (approx 2-3lbs)...we ate the small one...yummy!
I had heard that wahoo was an excellent eating fish and tried it at Fido's (it was the special)...I didn't like it at all. Yucko! Barracuda was WAAAAAAY better!
Anyway...I won't call it my 2 "sense" 'cause I drank so much Belikin and rum, I have no sense left at all!!!

Pirate....You're a f--king buccaneer! I would not think a measly one-celled dinoflagellate could bother a scalawag like you.

I have caught 2 great barracudas about
20 pounds each inside the reef trolling,
they were cut into steaks seasoned and barbacued on the grill and were
delicious.I am told that the cuda in belize
tastes totally different than those in the US.