A science story, huh?

Is NYU a scientist?

I felt it.

I felt.

And I just thought, well.

It was that golden moment.

Because science was on my side. Hi everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider,

where we bring you true personal stories about science.

This week's story is from Molly Payne-Winn.

The story was recorded in January 2014 at One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine.

So one summer, I was an accomplice in murder, or rather, maybe I should say assassination, because it was a very targeted killing of over

75,000 lake trout we went out on the lake just after ice out in June and set numerous

very large gillnets a day and if we were enough, we would haul in nets while the fish were still

fresh, and they would be alive, and we'd smack their heads on the side of the boat, throw their

dead bodies back into the lake. But most of the time, we weren't lucky enough for the live catches,

and the nets would linger in the water for up to two weeks. And when we would haul those nets in,

it would be full of dead, rotting pieces and bits of lake trout. And the easiest way to get

those fish out of the nets, well, the ones that didn't just fall apart at the touch, was to actually

squeeze the bodies with your hands until the swim

bladders burst and there's a sort of small explosion of flesh and then you pull the fish out

of the net and throw it back into the lake. And I can vividly remember sitting portside

with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my lap

...