New Weapon Against Invading Fish: The Pan
Filed under: Discovery,News & Resources
As human commerce and mobility act like a great global Waring blender for biology, communities around the world are grappling with the impacts of waves of introduced and invasive species.
(From The New York Times / by Andrew C. Revkin) — Fish present particular challenges, with the Great Lakes girding for the arrival of Asian carp and lionfish, escapees from the tropical fish trade that sport fans of toxin-tipped spines, spreading in the Caribbean and up the East Coast as far as Long Island.
Recognizing the near impossibility of stopping these invasions, residents of affected regions and some biologists are shifting tactics and encouraging folks to catch, kill and eat them. Fisheries biologists at Kentucky State University are hoping to create a market for “Kentucky tuna.” Here’s some video of a few cooking methods.) [10:14 p.m. | Updated If you're near the Florida Keys on Oct. 23, you can still sign up for the Middle Keys Lionfish Derby and do your part for indigenous species.]
Randy Olson, a marine biologist turned filmmaker and coach for scientists eager to communicate with the rest of us, has produced a new video (above) about the merits of eating lionfish, with a Death to Lionfish Web site coming shortly.
Maurice “Mojo” White, a resident of the Bahamas, has created Lionfishhunter.com, which holds what he says is the world’s largest collection of lionfish recipes. He also has shot some video showing how to snip the fins while (mostly) avoiding getting jabbed. Below you can read some answers to questions I posed to Olson and White in recent days. Here’s one of White’s videos, showing his lionfish control efforts, from reef to fork:
I asked Olson why he returned to his marine roots with his “death to lionfish” campaign:
I look for good stories. Twenty years ago the enormous size of barnacle penises was a good enough story to prompt me to make a music video about them which is still popular with invertebrate zoology instructors. The controversies around evolution and global warming provide the conflict needed for good stories and thus were the focus of my two feature films. In this same manner, the invasion of lionfish in the Caribbean is an equally fascinating story. The PSA is intended simply as an attention-getting device to snag the interest of the non-lionfish infatuated general public, hopefully guiding them to our Web site which then links them to a variety of sources of information on the issue ranging from government agencies such as NOAA/Sea Grant to individuals like the Lionfish Hunter.
I asked him, in his role as marine scientist, to summarize the implications of the lionfish invasion:
It sadly follows on the heals of overfishing, coral bleaching, urchin die-offs and all the other afflictions that have degraded Caribbean coral reefs over the past five centuries (my Shifting Baselines colleague Jeremy Jackson has done a great deal to call attention to the extent of human impacts going back not just just decades but centuries, starting with his landmark 1999 paper “ Reefs Since Columbus.” In the case of lionfish, they were accidentally introduced from the Pacific sometime in the 1980’s in southern Florida. They appear to be almost pre-adapted to wreck the Caribbean, having no adult predators, but more importantly, the females produce egg jelly masses that are rich in defensive chemicals which some scientists think allow for a much higher survivorship rate than in the Pacific.
Once established, they feed on the juveniles of other species, wreaking havoc on reef communities. I’ve seen some stunning photos of single coral heads with more than a dozen lionfish hovering around. It makes me think of the crown-of-thorns starfish problem on Pacific coral reefs, which I studied during the same years that the lionfish were first getting to know the Caribbean.
Invasions of introduced species may seem funny, but as a great article this week in The New Yorker makes clear for the case of Asian carp introduced in the Midwest, just because the fish may look or act funny (like the seemingly hilarious carp the fly waaay out of the water), the impacts to natural communities can be devastating.
Here’s my short interview with White:
Q.
What do you do when you’re not lionfish hunting or eating?
A.
When I am not lionfish hunting I am usually involved in island activities on Eleuthera, which include surfing, island exploration, playing music at local gathering spots, and fixing things, many things. There is no Wal-Mart or big lumber chain so I end up inventing ways to fix stuff and that occupies a lot of my time. The summers I spend on the beach in North Carolina.
Q.
What got you focused on this issue/resource?
A.
My interest in hunting down lionfish comes from my love of the ocean. I saw my first lionfish two years back and thought “what a rare sight”. Now they are everywhere. They eat everything nonstop. I even found sea horses in some of their bellies. They are destroying our reef ecosystem in the Bahamas and probably will soon conquer the east coast of the U.S. I can’t help but get involved. The Bahamas government has been advertising on national radio to “kill all that you see,” so I gladly obey. Then I thought that it was such a shame to see all this meat going to waste, so I did my research, found out the meat was good, and started eating them. My first bite I was scared because I thought the venom from the spines might affect the meat, but it does not. Now I have the largest lionfish recipe catalog on the Internet. I have lionfish taste testing all the time at my house and lionfish beats out grouper, snapper, and jack every time. Great tasting pure white meat.
Q.
Have you ever been stung?
A.
I have never been stung. If you take care while hunting, you can avoid getting stung. One of my friends got stung though. He was so excited to spear his first lionfish he raised the fish out of the water and the fish slid down the spear and poked him. We immediately immersed the affected area in the boat engine water, took him ashore and had him dip his hand in almost-boiling water. Heat will neutralize the venom. So 30 minutes later he was fine but, oh, the initial pain was bad. He said it was like somebody repeatedly hitting you with a hammer. You know catfish have a similar venom spine on their back that hurts like the dickins and I have been stung by one of them.
Q.
Are there other exotic species or environmental issues of this sort that you’re involved with?
A.
Believe it or not we also have some other invasive species in the Bahamas that are putting a dent on the ecosystem there. One is the raccoon and the other is the Brazilian pepper tree. The raccoon is destroying all the farmers’ crops on Eleuthera. So a group of us have formed a raccoon club where we receive a raccoon from one of the local farmers and we get together and eat him. If cooked right, taste like roast beef. We do this to show the locals that you are not going to die if you eat them. Funny though, every time I get a cold or the flu, the raccoon gets blamed. The Brazilian pepper tree has just been introduced to the island and is starting to invade as well. I understand that it is one of Florida’s best nectar producing plants and, although the honey has a distinct peppery taste, which many consider unsuitable as table grade, it does have local acceptance there. So I am going to do my research and figure out how to make pepper tree honey as well.
Q.
Do you have any interest in heading north and finding out how to cook up bighead carp?
A.
Would I be willing to eat a bighead carp? Heck, yeah. Watch out invasive species, you’re gonna get eaten. Eating these invasive species will not solve the problem but it will lessen the impact and provide a new food source for this hungry world. I see nothing but positives from this approach. My plans for the near future are to start up a lionfish nonprofit organization to educate and eradicate. So many people are interested in finding out more and getting involved. I also plan on getting chefs involved in creating their own recipes to add to the ever growing lionfish catalog on my Web site, then film the chefs and post videos.
Back on the carp front, maybe it’s time for someone to start dreaming up a campaign to mainstream gefilte fish.
