38 STONE Atlantic halibut fish

That's one helluva halibut! Retired policeman battles for three hours to catch 38 STONE fish

* 8ft 3in Atlantic halibut smashed previous world record by 58lb
* Would make 1,000 fillet portions and as a good quality fish restaurant can charge £25 for halibut main course, it could have realised a value of £25,000

A retired policeman battled for three hours to catch a halibut weighing a whopping 38.5 stone to claim a world record.

The super flat fish was so big that at one point Reinhard Wuhrmann's rod snapped in two as he was tried to snare the creature off the island of Senja in northern Norway.

The 62-year-old and two others were only able to haul it onto their boat after tying a rope around it when it came alongside.

The 8ft 3in Atlantic halibut tipped the scales at just over 540lb - smashing the previous world record by an impressive 58lb.

It would have sold for about £2,500 at a British fish market and made about 1,000 fillet portions.

A good quality fish restaurant can charge £25 for a halibut main course, meaning the record fish could have realised a value of £25,000.

Despite being very tired after catching the halibut, Mr Wuhrmann still went through with a bet to shave off his beard the men had previously made for netting the biggest fish.

Boat skipper Ulrich Alstetter, 53, said: 'It was an incredible experience and we are very proud.

'Reinhard was very tired afterwards but also intoxicated by the experience and by claiming a world record.

'We had made a bet to shave his beard if he caught the biggest fish. Like a good sport he went through with it.'

Ulrich said: 'The halibut took Reinhard's little jigg bait and his rod bent over double.

'We all watched for a few minutes and then it became clear this was going to be a big fish.

'After about 90 minutes of Reinhard trying to reel it in his rod broke in two from the pressure it was under. It was his favourite rod.

'Because I am taller than him I took what was left of his rod and after another hour the fish was alongside the boat. It was then seen for the first time and it was a huge fish.

'It then shot another 100 metres deep and it took me another 15 minutes to bring him up and another 15 minutes to get a rope around it.

'It was a team effort but Reinhard was the official catcher.'

The men each took about 25lb of halibut fillets home and the rest was given away to other anglers and locals.

The previous record for an Atlantic halibut was held by fellow German Gunther Hansel who caught a 483lb specimen off Iceland last year.

Anglers Bosse Carlsson and Hans-Olov Nilsson caught a 464lbs halibut off Norway in 2009.

Before that Danish angler Soren Beck caught a then-record 443lbs specimen in the Arctic Circle off Norway in 2008.

The biggest Pacific halibut caught was by Jack Tragis off Alaska in November 1996 with a 459lbs fish.

Atlantic halibut - Hippoglossus hippoglossus in Latin - is among the largest bony fish in the world.

Their native habitat is the northern Atlantic, from Greenland to the Barents Sea and as far south as the Bay of Biscay.

They can reach up to 15ft in length, weigh up to 700lbs and can live for 50 years.

Their diet is usually other fish like cod, haddock and herring although they do face predation from seals and the Greenland shark.

Wow! This Blog has reached 100 Destinations around the World!

This is to celebrate the fact; as of today, that this Blog has been visited by 100 destinations around the World!

Just click on the Destination Image; top right, and you'll be taken to the log where you can view where guests have visited us from!

Remember, it's not a page hit, but a global destination, so we could have had 40+ guests just from one destination!

Thank you all for visiting...hope you've found it an interesting visit!

Boo, the cutest dog in the World

Is this the cutest dog in the world? Boo the Pomeranian has millions of fans and his own book!

He has nearly two million fans and a book deal. But Boo isn't a reality TV star, actor or a pop singer - he's a pet dog.

The five-year-old Pomeranian has the fame most celebrities dream of after amassing 1.79million fans on social networking site Facebook.

And Boo is also a hit with the ladies. He attracted the attention of Hollywood stars including Khloe Kardashian, who posted a picture of the dog on her blog last year and singer Ke$ha, who Tweeted that Boo was 'her new boyfriend.'

Since then, Boo's Facebook page, launched in 2009, has gone viral, receiving thousands of new fans a day.

Ways to dissolve a corpse

Forget cremations or being buried, how about being liquidised? Funeral home brings in machine which turns dead bodies into 'brown syrup'

A Florida funeral home has introduced an eerie alternative to burial or cremation - body liquefaction.

The stainless steel machine can dissolve a corpse in just under three hours, and the 'brownish, syrupy' liquid is then pumped into the municipal water system.

The bones remaining can be ground down and returned to the family, rather like ashes from a cremation.

Resomation (from the Greek 'resoma' meaning 'rebirth of the human body') is an environmentally friendly alternative to burial or cremation, according to a BBC report.

The Anderson-McQueen funeral home in St Petersburg had the body liquefier put in just days after Florida became the seventh state to legalise the machines.

They plan to try it out on some dead bodies over the coming weeks.

The 'alkaline hydrolysis' unit, installed by a Glasgow-based company called Resomation Ltd, works by submerging the body in a solution of water and potassium hydroxide, which is then pressurised and heated to 180C for two-and-a-half to three hours.

The end result is a small quantity of green-brown tinted liquid containing amino acids, peptides, sugars and salts and soft, porous white bone remains which are easily crushed.

The white ash can then be returned to the next of kin of the deceased.

The liquid can be recycled back to the ecosystem by being applied to a memorial garden or forest or simply put into the sewerage system.

Resomation Ltd founder Sandy Sullivan said: 'Let's face it - there's no nice way to go. You have to go from what looks like a human person to ash and bone, whether you get there by flame or decomposition.

'If you stood in front of a cremation, with the flames and heat, it seems violent. You go next door and the resomation is quiet.

'It's stainless steel and clinical and sterile. It seems nicer and returns (a body) quickly to ash.

'We're using the exact same chemistry that's carried out by bacteria but instead of happening over months and years, it happens in three hours.'

A funeral director in Columbus, Ohio, reportedly had his body liquefying operation shut down a few months ago - after 19 uses - because it was not approved by the state.

Resomation Ltd claim that the system can reduce a funeral home's greenhouse gas emissions by 35 per cent, and that mercury emissions - typically released from dental fillings during cremations - are eliminated.

A scientist told the BBC that disposing of remains in a municipal water system is perfectly safe.
The UK is considering bringing in the technology here.

Giant 21foot Crocodile captured - largest in the World so far...

It weighs one ton and is believed responsible for eating at least one fisherman, but this monster crocodile has finally been caught by 100 very cautious men.

Measuring 21ft from snout to tail, the massive creature is the largest crocodile captured alive in recent years.

The beast was caught, after a three-week hunt, in a creek in the Philippines by villagers who had lived in fear of it for more than 20 years.

Its nearest rival in the monster stakes is Cassius, an Australian salt-water crocodile which measures a 'mere' 18ft - and which is still on the loose in the Northern Territory.

Cat Bully!

One puss' venture into a box ended in a cat-astrophe after its calculating companion cruelly trapped them in there.

The contented white puss initially looks like the cat that got the cream as it contentedly sits in his large box and stretches while exploring its new play-thing.

But little did it know that it was being coolly appraised by it's feline foe.