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What price a fish?

Kill a salmon and you have maybe $150 worth of flesh - ''milk'' it, and you have maybe $700 worth of roe.

Simone Egger

Fast work: salmon roe being milked.
Fast work: salmon roe being milked.Supplied

As if ''milking'' eggs out of a fish isn't weird enough, that it happened after hours in a warehouse space with a clutch of witnesses - among them two small people in bear suits - made the scene very David Lynch. Famous for his surrealist films (likened to watching nightmares), Lynch is also notably coffee obsessed, with his own brand of beans, so the wall of coffee beans to my left is amplifying the eeriness.

I'm at one of St Ali South Melbourne's ''meet the producer'' nights (the small bears are owner Salvatore Malatesta's kids) and we're all here to meet farmer Nick Gorman from Yarra Valley Caviar and to see how to milk a salmon of its roe. As fish farming goes, Yarra Valley Caviar swims upstream, rearing its fish for their roe, rather than their flesh. The farm adopts a ''natural approach'', providing as natural and free-ranging an environment for the fish as possible, without using hormones or chemicals.

There's some expectant shuffling of feet as Gorman leaves to fetch a fish. Moments later he bursts through the cafe doors, shirt wet, sleeves rolled up, holding a live, sedated 10-kilogram salmon, orange eggs spurting out; he rushes to position her over a bucket fitted with a sieve, the rest of us rush for devices - for visual evidence of this strangeness.

Simone Egger fish-milking at St Ali South.
Simone Egger fish-milking at St Ali South.Tim Grey
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The fish holds about one-quarter of its body weight in eggs: that's 2.5 kilograms, and around $700 worth. Gorman holds her on her side and gently runs thumb and forefingers along her belly to squeeze out the eggs. She's naturally slippery, and he wears a glove on the hand holding her tail for grip. Others are invited to ''have a go''. There's an urgency to it, a fish out of water can only survive so long. Of the four or so salmon we milk, one wakes up and begins thrashing for the familiar feel of water, instead finding a firm hand and suffocating air. Gorman rushes her back to the holding tank on the tray of his ute. The tank water is spiked with clove oil, a natural anaesthetic, which puts the fish to sleep; they're ''under'' for less than 30 minutes.

Salmon are amazing creatures with a migratory imprint that sends them on a journey from their freshwater home, out to the ocean, and back to the very same spot to spawn. Considering most humans get lost in Ikea, that a fish can find its way out to the ocean and back again, guided by smell, taste, light and even the Earth's magnetic field, is staggering. Farmed fish can't migrate, but they will still spawn every May.

Salmon roe are perfectly round, orange balls about the size of a baby pea. Once they're cured - which we did by stirring the eggs in water salted with Olsson's macrobiotic sea salt - they're a tasty, textural treat, each one delivering a salty pop. At the farm, roe is pasteurised, picked over to remove any impurities, and packaged. ''Virgin'' caviar, from a fish's first spawn, is said to be softer to taste, and attracts a premium.

Cured roe, made using macrobiotic sea salt.
Cured roe, made using macrobiotic sea salt.Tim Grey

Fish eggs are rich with omega-3s, vitamins and minerals. Brain food, they say. The milking may have messed with my mind, but the quality of the caviar is for real.

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Available: Collingwood Children's Farm, Abbotsford Convent, St Kilda and Gasworks Farmers' Markets (vicfarmersmarkets.org.au). Claringbolds (claringbolds.com.au), Prahran Market.

Cost: 50g $20; virgin caviar 30g $30; yarravalleycaviar.com.au

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