My 3 year old female BD died unexpectedly with no visible signs of cause of death. I decided to cut her open to see if there was anything internally. Everything looked fine to me - liver red and looked healthy, had digested food contents in the stomach, gills looked clean.
Picture when I netted her out - her back was really swollen
I cut her open from the back first as she was pretty humped up - she was probably bloated. You can see her stomach, intestines and liver. Their backs are really tough and it took several passes with a sharp exacto knife to cut through. You can see she had a fair amount of body fat (white stuff) that was located on her back. Now I know why it is hard to see the pups moving on fat females. The liquid stuff was the contents of her stomach - remnants of the smelts she ate the night before. If you zoom in you can see the spines of the smelts
Gills - they looked clean with no flukes
Then I cut her open from the belly - no signs of worms, cysts, etc.
Oral Cavity - Thought she may have eaten a stinger and got it lodged inside. There have been a few posts of rays eating stingers and one had the stinger coming out through the top of her head. Nothing. Felt and rubbed all inside to see if something sharp had lodged inside her, didn't find anything.
Any insights others may have or things they notice, please feel free to comment. Maybe we can learn something from this.
Picture when I netted her out - her back was really swollen
I cut her open from the back first as she was pretty humped up - she was probably bloated. You can see her stomach, intestines and liver. Their backs are really tough and it took several passes with a sharp exacto knife to cut through. You can see she had a fair amount of body fat (white stuff) that was located on her back. Now I know why it is hard to see the pups moving on fat females. The liquid stuff was the contents of her stomach - remnants of the smelts she ate the night before. If you zoom in you can see the spines of the smelts
Gills - they looked clean with no flukes
Then I cut her open from the belly - no signs of worms, cysts, etc.
Oral Cavity - Thought she may have eaten a stinger and got it lodged inside. There have been a few posts of rays eating stingers and one had the stinger coming out through the top of her head. Nothing. Felt and rubbed all inside to see if something sharp had lodged inside her, didn't find anything.
Any insights others may have or things they notice, please feel free to comment. Maybe we can learn something from this.