40kg groper eats 35cm pipe

http://www.cairns.com.au/article/201...ocal-news.html

by Ben Blomfield
Tuesday, March 16, 2010

© The Cairns Post



A 40kg groper that ate a plastic pipe during a feeding frenzy has amazingly survived an operation that gave vets just four minutes to save its life.

The huge fish swallowed the 35cm PVC water outlet spout at a Cairns aquaculture shop after the tubing was knocked off its mountings.

The groper, thinking it was a large squid, swallowed it whole with the elbows on the piping lodging in its stomach and wedging behind its gills.

The 20,000 litre tank had to be drained to about 1500 litres with vet Paul Matthews charged with snaffling the fish and retrieving the pipe.

The vet said fish could only remain sedated out of water for four minutes so he had to work fast.

"It was jammed tight," he said.

"The only option left was to use a large dog dental gag to secure the sleeping groper’s jaws open and insert my hand through its mouth, past razor-sharp teeth and gill rakers into the stomach."

With the help of an assistant on the outside, Dr Matthews wriggled the pipe into a position where he could get a good grip on it.

"With 30 seconds to spare, all attention now turned to getting the groper back into the tank with his mates," he said.

Dr Matthews said the groper was given a shot of antibiotics before going back into the tank.