November 10, 2009 – It’s not all hard work for students at the University of California, Berkeley.

On Sunday at the University, hundreds of amateur sushi chefs became intimate with 180 pounds of fish as they assembled a 330-foot California sushi roll. A UC Berkeley spokeswoman said that the rice-and-seaweed creation is the largest of its kind, surpassing a 300-foot roll made in Hawaii back in 2001.

In addition to the raw fish, students used 200 pounds of rice, 80 pounds of avocado, and 80 pounds of cucumber. And in a nod to the school’s hundreds of vegetarians, the final 15 feet of the roll contained tofu instead of seafood.

The fishy stunt was part of a series of celebrations commemorating the 50th anniversary of the school’s Center for Japanese Studies.