Word: prawns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Japanese Ichthyologist Motosaku Fujinaga was still a senior in Tokyo University when he decided on his life's work: a study of the life and loves of the 6-in., shrimplike creature known as the kuruma prawn. Dr. Fujinaga's selection was more than an exercise in esoteric biology. Kuruma prawns are Japanese delicacies and are usually kept alive until the very moment when they are either deep fried as tempura or skinned alive and eaten raw as sushi...
Brutal Female. Before his experiments began to pay off. Dr. Fujinaga had to go back to the beginning-he had to pry into the prawns' most intimate secrets. For reasons known only to themselves, the little creatures mate only between midnight and 3 a.m. on perfect summer nights in calm, untroubled water. Night after night Dr. Fujinaga waded hip-deep in his experimental saltwater pond, wielding only a flashlight. Not until 1940 did he see the first prawn mating ever witnessed by man. "The ritual is truly bewitching," he reported. "The male prawn first chases the female; then...
Plankton & Clam Larvae. In 1959, modestly financed by fisheries companies, Dr. Fujinaga set up a pilot prawn ranch in abandoned salt-evaporation ponds at Iku-shima on Shikoku Island. He now has 30 employees, and the place is jumping with prawns. The tiny just-hatched kurumas are coddled in indoor tanks and eat yellowish-brown Skeletonema plankton that have been grown in filtered sea water doped with chemicals. Other kinds of plankton, also specially cultured, carry them through the next stage. When they are one-quarter-inch long, they graduate to outdoor tanks and are fed clam eggs and larvae...