[Paddlewise] Hard chine fish

Michael of Tallahassee wrote;

>I admit to being befuddled by the technicalities.   Therefore I  must
>put my trust in Mother Nature.  I will stick with round until someone
>can show me a fish or aquatic mammal with hard chines.

Dear Boy,

If only we would all put our trust in Mother Nature would we not all be 
better off? . Regrettably she does not always act responsibly.

Consider, for example, the hard chine fish. Inuit legends tell us that all 
fish were hard chined prior to the Inuit discovery of crack cocaine. It was 
the hard chine fish that inspired the design of the Greenland kayak just as 
the mouth of the migrating salmon inspired the unique bifid bows of Aleut 
kayaks. All went well with fish and Inuit for many centuries. The hard chine 
fish was ideally suited to the arctic ocean environment being  shaped 
roughly like and ice cube and more stable when floating on the surface than 
a round fish. This allowed Inuit hunters to catch the fish and then tow them 
home without worrying about them capsizing and drowning. A drowned fish, of 
course lacks flavor due to the excessive amounts of water ingested when 
upside down. For a people dependent upon fish as an important part of their 
diet (caribou are low in Omega -3 fatty acids) this was important. If you 
have ever eaten a properly caught and cooked fish you will know what I mean. 
Indeed, the only way to attract young Inuit girls is through a well cooked 
fish - but that is a different story.

Nature played a dirty trick on the Inuit, however. Once the Inuit harnessed 
the power of caribou paunch and adapted it to the crotch dirigible they soon 
found their way to Columbia using this extraordinary means of 
transportation. There they discovered cocaine and it was not long before 
they were manufacturing crack in enormous quantities. So great, in fact, 
that they could not use it all themselves. The over supply threatened to 
destroy the Inuit economy as the US DEA was making imports to the US ever 
more difficult in flagrant disregard for the NAFTA agreement. And so the 
elders decided to throw the surplus into the ocean in order to support the 
price structure. This, as we know now, was a huge mistake.

The fish soon mellowed out and lost their edges becoming the wussy, rounded 
type we now know.  Totally devoid of flavor and difficult to keep on a 
plate, fish are no longer a major food source for the  Inuit nor  for couch 
potato North Americans who prefer the flat, table hamburger.

Fortunately the Inuit retained the hard chined shape in their boats to give 
us some idea of what used to be.

Sincerely,

Dr. Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G
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