Live data from Hacker News

Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

defector.com

1–10 of 295 posts

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#4
post #3

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/st-mary... tl;dr After 20 years of legal battles abandoned factory containing tanks of rotting fish in St Mary’s NL is getting cleaned up, paid for by provincial taxpayers.

After 20 years this hasn't completely rotted and scentless? I need to read the article.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#5
I wanted to crack a joke that Swede's do like their stinky fermented fish, why not sell to them… But I figured why not see if other cultures might also like it, and was floored with how many there were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_fish

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#6
There's a farmers market here in Zurich where some Italians drive up and sell Italian products like cheeses, sausages, etc. but one thing I buy from them I've never seen anywhere else - they are rotten salted anchovies packed with peppercorns. Stink super bad and are falling apart but when you're making a sauce you drop one in and the anchovy dissolves and delivers tons of umami - glutamates - and you no longer smell the rotten fish smell. I'm sure professional chefs must know about these.

I keep them in baggies in the freezer so that they don't stink up the fridge.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#7
post #2

Since this is just salted, fermented fish, which the scientist in the article claims he would like to taste, why does it need to be buried in plastic? Why not slowly pour it into a sewer, over the course of several months?

Sewers go places, and it is nearly a million liters of extremely concentrated stinky. If you do this, you take a single location source of stinky and smear it over a much larger set of locations that will then ALL be extremely stinky, in a way that isn’t easily cleaned with water as the fats and oils (also extremely stinky!) are of course not soluble.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#8
post #7
post #2

Since this is just salted, fermented fish, which the scientist in the article claims he would like to taste, why does it need to be buried in plastic? Why not slowly pour it into a sewer, over the course of several months?

Sewers go places, and it is nearly a million liters of extremely concentrated stinky. If you do this, you take a single location source of stinky and smear it over a much larger set of locations that will then ALL be extremely stinky, in a way that isn’t easily cleaned with water as the fats and oils (also extremely stinky!) are of course not soluble.

I'd say dump it in the ocean, but I don't guess any boat will take it. Still, sounds like they're going to make the area around the landfill stink forever.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#9
post #2

Since this is just salted, fermented fish, which the scientist in the article claims he would like to taste, why does it need to be buried in plastic? Why not slowly pour it into a sewer, over the course of several months?

From the linked Eater article:

>Perhaps the most promising and most discouraging event for the factory happened in 2016. That year, the provincial government approved a cleanup plan, and a private company began the process. But the cleanup was halted soon after it started when it became clear that the contractors were dumping several dozen vats of rotten fish sauce directly into the ocean. According to Ryan, the provincial government ordered the factory’s drains to be blocked to prevent any more sauce from seeping into the ocean.

https://www.eater.com/2019/5/23/18634704/st-marys-irish-loop...

I think dumping it slowly would be better than a hazardous waste landfill, but government bureaucracy is not capable of handling this situation.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#10
Isn't the ocean filled with salt and already knows how to biologically degrade fish? I sort of think that you could deposit this at sea somehow, just need to spread it out sufficiently.

I am sure I am overlooking something that would lead to an unintended ecological disaster.

Post reply on HN