Pan-pan

Pan-pan fish are large, soft-spined fish that congregate in small shoals throughout the Neol Strait. A full grown pan-pan fish can measure up to 60 inches in length and weight up to 45 pounds.    Pan-pan fish are dark-brown to coppery-red in colour with round edged yet pointed scales and soft spines projecting out from their spinous and soft dorsals. These spines are generally blue-black in colour, though they can take on a purple tinge in particularly large pan-pan. The spines are not rigid and cannot cause serious harm at the time of catching; instead, pan-pan spines sharpen through filling with a high quantity of blood when the pan-pan fish loses consciousness or is frightened. These spines then can kill a predator which may capture one pan-pan, allowing the other pan-pans to escape. The pan-pans spines are said to be so effective for this purposes that no natural predators of the pan-pan exist, though this is unverified and dead pan-pan fish with wounds are discovered regularly.   Pan-pan fish, due to their large size, are quite calm even in rough seas and when there are disturbances on the surface of the water. Pan-pan fish also do not swim down to the deeps very often, preferring to stay near the surface where vegetation matts and other plant debris is easily accessible as a food source. Only if a pan-pan is very hungry will it swim down to where it can eat corral or seaweed that grows in the darker parts of the Neol Strait.    While this behaviour helps the pan-pan fish from being scared away from plentiful food sources by other fish, this also makes the pan-pan easy to catch with nets. However, due to their size and weight, lifting a net full of pan-pan fish is extremely difficult and so rapid catching of pan-pan fish is generally regarded as impossible. It is also usually seen as a waste of time because while pan-pan fish are commonly caught and sold for their meat in all the coastal towns in Endref, they are not considered to be flavourful and so are consumed as a matter of quantity rather than quality.   In recent years, collaboration between the Whalef family and the Forgotten Phrontistery has found that pan-pan blood is an extreme re-hydration cure. This new purpose for pan-pan blood has led to a smaller industry harvesting blood from fish processing buildings along the docks, and catching pan-pan simply for the purpose of collecting their blood. The widespread use of pan-pan blood for this purpose has not yet come to fruition, though the Whalef family is using their influence to limit pan-pan blood sales to help drive up prices and demand while also working to create a distribution network for the liquid in other nations.