Sri Lankan Fishermen Dead After Drinking From Mysterious Bottles Found At Sea

[Yithian]

No... I'm not saying that those items were added to the drink itself. That would be pretty odd indeed.
I'm saying that maybe something buoyant was holding the bottles afloat, and this was not mentioned in the re-telling of the story.

They were on a trawler.

Could they have 'dredged them up'?

 

[Fabio Picasso]

No... I'm not saying that those items were added to the drink itself. That would be pretty odd indeed.
I'm saying that maybe something buoyant was holding the bottles afloat, and this was not mentioned in the re-telling of the story.

Perhaps I did not express myself correctly when I mentioned additions, it was to the general image of the supposed discovery, not to the contents of the bottle itself.

 

[Fabio Picasso]

It seems there were many bottles

"The fishermen had distributed some of the bottles they found to nearby fishing trawlers, said Susantha Kahawatte, director general of the Sri Lankan Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, and the authorities were trying to notify them against consuming the unknown liquids."
The Independent, UK
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/sri-lanka-tangalle-fishermen-dead-b2571748.html

 

[Yithian]

There is some suggestion that this is an image of the surviving fishermen. The Singaporean vessel bringing him ashore has (had?) apparently experienced 'technical' (mechanical?) troubles and his return is (was?) delayed.

Navy media spokesman Captain Gayan Wickramasuriya says that his condition is 'not serious'.

All local comment I have read (in translation) is very unsympathetic: gluttony, stupidity and addiction are variously being blamed.

View attachment 79018

Looks now like this was a stock image after all:

He's healthy enough to walk from ship to ambulance.

I fear the reporting is going to peter out before we get the necessary whys and wherefores.

 

[eburacum]

He said that there were lots of examples of fish being used as ritual objects but not much evidence of them being used as food (talking about prehistoric times and up to Bronze Age IIRC).

Yeah; my missus says there is some evidence of a 'fish taboo' in the Bronze Age, which sounds daft to me. People have eaten fish all over the world, but not so much in Bronze Age Britain, it seems.

 

[eburacum]

Now I come to read the reference she's just sent me, it seems that the fish taboo was late Bronze early Iron Age, and seems to have been a prejudice against hunting and gathering as opposed to farming. Snobs.

 

[Spookdaddy]

They were on a trawler.

Could they have 'dredged them up'?

I wonder if it might have been some sort of illegal booze smuggling operation - either one that they were involved in, or that they chanced across.

Totally different location, but I think it's the movie Reykjavik Rotterdam that shows illicit alcohol being dropped overboard from a freighter at a prearranged location to be picked up later by smaller boats for onward transport to the mainland.

Possibly this crew came across a floating cache and overindulged. Or possibly the product was only partly processed, and needed diluting for safe human consumption.

 

[Yithian]

Before things went awry:

42-year-old Nayana Kanda, 24-year-old Pathum Dilshan, 32-year-old Sujith Sanjeeva, 33-year-old Pradeep Nishantha and 68-year-old Ajith Kumara who were traveling on the ship died.

 

[Min Bannister]

Before things went awry:

View attachment 79217

42-year-old Nayana Kanda, 24-year-old Pathum Dilshan, 32-year-old Sujith Sanjeeva, 33-year-old Pradeep Nishantha and 68-year-old Ajith Kumara who were traveling on the ship died.

That DOES look like the type of bottle that arrives in my lab covered with chemical hazard stickers..

 

[Mythopoeika]

That DOES look like the type of bottle that arrives in my lab covered with chemical hazard stickers..

Yep.

 

[SimonBurchell]

That DOES look like the type of bottle that arrives in my lab covered with chemical hazard stickers..

Yep.

It also looks quite like a cider jug.

 

[Yithian]

That DOES look like the type of bottle that arrives in my lab covered with chemical hazard stickers..

Do those stickers tend to be waterproof?

 

[Min Bannister]

Do those stickers tend to be waterproof?

No, not really. I think they would come off with soaking.

 

[Mythopoeika]

It also looks quite like a cider jug.

A bit, yes. But cider jugs are usually not brown.

 

[maximus otter]

I still reckon that the men bought illegally-produced booze for an end-of-tour party.

This document from the Sri Lankan government specifically mentions (6.3, Strategy 2) that “Illicit production and sale of alcohol should be eliminated by sustained vigorous law enforcement…” etc., suggesting the existence of a significant problem.

Last November, “…the [Sri Lankan] president's Chief of Staff Sagala Ratnayake expressed concern about the latest alcohol tax increase, saying that it led to a decrease in tax revenue and a surge in illegal production. Excise Commissioner Saman Jayasinghe made similar claims in March.”

https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/a...tax-reform-spurs-economic-and-health-recovery

maximus otter

 

[James_H]

I’d suspect that the boat’s crew had bought cheap, illegal alcohol for an end-of-trip party.

A friend of mine who lived in Vietnam said that the problem of illegal 'fake' alcohol being sold in bars and killing people was serious enough there that they stopped drinking, having lost friends and acquaintances to it.

Illicit alcohol certainly does exist in SL, too. This article tells of the seizure of a bunch of moonshine and also describes the drinking culture in Sri Lanka. Because of the high price of imported liquor, moonshine or kasippu is common and does lead to methanol poisoning, though these incidents are not recorded separately from deaths caused by excessive consumption of ethanol.

Here is a case of 10 deaths and 55 people hospitalised after a night on moonshine in 2008

 

[catseye]

Now I come to read the reference she's just sent me, it seems that the fish taboo was late Bronze early Iron Age, and seems to have been a prejudice against hunting and gathering as opposed to farming. Snobs.

And yet Must Farm has evidence of fish traps. Which begs the question, when it comes to fishing, is it really hunting and gathering?

 

[uair01]

A friend of mine who lived in Vietnam said that the problem of illegal 'fake' alcohol being sold in bars and killing people was serious enough there that they stopped drinking, having lost friends and acquaintances to it.

Illicit alcohol certainly does exist in SL, too. This article tells of the seizure of a bunch of moonshine and also describes the drinking culture in Sri Lanka. Because of the high price of imported liquor, moonshine or kasippu is common and does lead to methanol poisoning, though these incidents are not recorded separately from deaths caused by excessive consumption of ethanol.

Here is a case of 10 deaths and 55 people hospitalised after a night on moonshine in 2008

This is the obligatory Chubbyemu video. In the comments there are many do's and dont's about making moonshine:

 

[eburacum]

And yet Must Farm has evidence of fish traps. Which begs the question, when it comes to fishing, is it really hunting and gathering?

Apparently some wetland communities did eat fish. Fish just seems to have been unpopular in general, according to the isotopes.
I blame this chap.
https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/Unhygienix

 

[Fabio Picasso]

Before things went awry:

View attachment 79217

42-year-old Nayana Kanda, 24-year-old Pathum Dilshan, 32-year-old Sujith Sanjeeva, 33-year-old Pradeep Nishantha and 68-year-old Ajith Kumara who were traveling on the ship died.

A very similar bottle. I consider it unlikely that it has been floating

https://www.highendbottle.com/1-gal...-amber-glass-liquor-beer-wine-bottle-product/

 

[catseye]

Apparently some wetland communities did eat fish. Fish just seems to have been unpopular in general, according to the isotopes.
I blame this chap.
https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/Unhygienix

I wonder if the risk of poisoning came into things? After all, with no form of refrigeration, you wouldn't be able to transport fish very far inland without them starting to go off. And shellfish would be even worse. So perhaps a kind of superstition arose that fish more than two miles from water MUSTN'T be eaten?

 

[maximus otter]

Apparently some wetland communities did eat fish. Fish just seems to have been unpopular in general, according to the isotopes.
I blame this chap.
https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/Unhygienix

Fish (and oysters) seem to have had a rep as “poor people’s food”, something to be endured rather than enjoyed. (“Fish, not meat, on Fridays.”)

I remember a Time Team episode where they read a mediaeval apprentice’s contract with his master. lt specified that he wasn’t to be fed salmon more than three (?) times per week!

maximus otter

 

[Floyd]

I wonder if the risk of poisoning came into things? After all, with no form of refrigeration, you wouldn't be able to transport fish very far inland without them starting to go off. And shellfish would be even worse. So perhaps a kind of superstition arose that fish more than two miles from water MUSTN'T be eaten?

Drying, salting, pickling and smoking foods for preservation has been around for a long time though.

 

[catseye]

Fish (and oysters) seem to have had a rep as “poor people’s food”, something to be endured rather than enjoyed. (“Fish, not meat, on Fridays.”)

I remember a Time Team episode where they read a mediaeval apprentice’s contract with his master. lt specified that he wasn’t to be fed salmon more than three (?) times per week!

maximus otter

But we're talking about much earlier, Bronze Age to Iron Age transition. The Romans ate fish like nobody's business after all.

Drying, salting, pickling and smoking foods for preservation has been around for a long time though.

Bronze Age? Maybe smoking, but you'd only do that to significant pieces of meat, you wouldn't bother with shellfish. Salting requires salt which would have been much harder to come by back then. Not certain about the history of pickling.

We are talking about a long way back. I know that many of these techniques came in with the Romans.

 

[Floyd]

But we're talking about much earlier, Bronze Age to Iron Age transition. The Romans ate fish like nobody's business after all.

Bronze Age? Maybe smoking, but you'd only do that to significant pieces of meat, you wouldn't bother with shellfish. Salting requires salt which would have been much harder to come by back then. Not certain about the history of pickling.

We are talking about a long way back. I know that many of these techniques came in with the Romans.

Drying is the oldest known method.
The ancient Egyptians were doing it.

 

[catseye]

Drying is the oldest known method.
The ancient Egyptians were doing it.

They dried people, though.

 

[kesavaross]

I wonder if the risk of poisoning came into things? After all, with no form of refrigeration, you wouldn't be able to transport fish very far inland without them starting to go off. And shellfish would be even worse. So perhaps a kind of superstition arose that fish more than two miles from water MUSTN'T be eaten?

The fishing boats from Brighton would frequently sail to the coastal waters off the north east of England which must be several hundred miles away. When the fleet returned to Brighton the fish would then be loaded into large wicker baskets and the 'fish wives' would set off as a group with the wicker baskets strapped to them either the same day or the next and walk 15 miles over the South Downs to a major trading town called Lewes. There the fish would be sold at market.

That whole process must take, I would have thought, from catching the fish and selling them at least a week or more.

 

[catseye]

The fishing boats from Brighton would frequently sail to the coastal waters off the north east of England which must be several hundred miles away. When the fleet returned to Brighton the fish would then be loaded into large wicker baskets and the 'fish wives' would set off as a group with the wicker baskets strapped to them either the same day or the next and walk 15 miles over the South Downs to a major trading town called Lewes. There the fish would be sold at market.

That whole process must take, I would have thought, from catching the fish and selling them at least a week or more.

I composed a reply and then realised I'd got the wrong end of the stick.

I most certainly wouldn't eat fish that had been caught more than a week ago unless it had been well preserved. But I'm assuming that Bronze Age preservation methods wouldn't have been up to much.

Also noting that it seems to be a very tight time frame that 'not eating fish' came under. Late Bronze to early Iron age. Neolithic man certainly ate fish and in early medieval times (so, say Saxon onwards) it was part of the religious cannon - fish on Friday. The Romans ate fish. But it's just that oddness of no evidence for fish eating in the Bronze/Iron age that's so odd.

 

[kesavaross]

I composed a reply and then realised I'd got the wrong end of the stick.

I most certainly wouldn't eat fish that had been caught more than a week ago unless it had been well preserved. But I'm assuming that Bronze Age preservation methods wouldn't have been up to much.

Also noting that it seems to be a very tight time frame that 'not eating fish' came under. Late Bronze to early Iron age. Neolithic man certainly ate fish and in early medieval times (so, say Saxon onwards) it was part of the religious cannon - fish on Friday. The Romans ate fish. But it's just that oddness of no evidence for fish eating in the Bronze/Iron age that's so odd.

I've done a little googling and it is apparent that for fish to be saleable/edible after a week or more some type of preserving method must have been uses, quite probably smoking. Fresh fish from what I have read has to be cooked the same day. One article stated within 6 hours another stated within 2 hours. So it makes sense that with no knowledge of how to preserve fish it wouldn't be used as a food source. Maybe?

 

[Yithian]

I've done a little googling and it is apparent that for fish to be saleable/edible after a week or more some type of preserving method must have been uses, quite probably smoking.

Salt, smoke or ice are common, but it depends where you are.

This is the worst-tasting thing I've ever eaten:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongeo-hoe

It was like gristle marinaded in urine and made my eyes water.