Grouper Fishes: The Sign Of Wealthiness.

When I was travelling in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Philippines, I saw this fishes commonly offered at various seafood outlets. The way it arrived at the outlets (and to you)  makes the different. In some cities in China, exclusive seafood restaurants will have tanks and aquariums for the customers to choose the live fishes and other seafood items in either supermarket cart style or with helps from waiter / waitress who are ever willing to serve you and guide you on their best way of cooking styles from the chosen seafood items. After the selected items chosen, it will be weighted and later on will be serve to our table in a very mouth watering cooking styles. In some high class restaurants, the arrival of the dishes of certain grouper fish will be make public through announcement by special announcer in traditional dress using cymbals. .Ping! Ping! Ping!...Losipan! (....that is how they sound to me, Mouse Grouper!) Huh, think about the feeling of your guesses to know they were treated like an emperor! Off course you do not get the same treatment if just eating at stalls, eating frozen or chilled grouper. However, for those real seafood lovers, the taste of live seafood (when the were chosen, off course) are incomparable.

Due to high demand, these kind of fishes now being cultured intensively in many parts of the world especially in South East Asian countries, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. It also being caught from the wild with various catching equipments. Some quarters even worried that some of the grouper species may extinct due to overfishing activities. However, thank to the hormone treatment techniques, some species already successfully being bred in captivity giving less pressure to the wild stock, at least a little if not so much.

Maybe we can reduce some more pressure of wild caught groupers if we able to increase the the growth rate of the cultured fishes as compared to the current rate of 6 to 8 months for the fishes to reach the market size of 500g to 600g. That long required to grow the fish to the serving plate size which will be consumed in less than 20 minutes.