Yes, you can fight invasive species by eating them
Popular Mechanics
Two years ago, Glenn Reynolds reported on how Caribbean divers and chefs are fighting lionfish, an invader from the Indian Ocean, by putting them on restaurant menus. Now he returns to Grand Cayman and finds the result: Yep, it’s been working.
A while back, I wrote a piece here on dealing with invasive species by eating them. As part of my research, I went hunting lionfish with dive operators Nat Robb and Artemis “Art” Hintze off Grand Cayman, and then lunched on lionfish carpaccio. It was delicious.
Lionfish are native to the Indian Ocean, but they stowed away in ship ballasts, came to the Caribbean, and now they’re an invasive species, covering reefs with their spiny selves and displacing native species. There are no native predators and—although divemasters all over the Caribbean are trying to teach groupers, sharks, moray eels and other predators to eat them—so far their spread has been explosive.
But while fish are pretty dumb and set in their culinary ways, people are more adaptable. As I noted in my earlier piece, lionfish have an Achilles’ heel: They’re delicious. I’d describe their taste as a cross between lobster and Chilean Sea Bass.
While it’s hard to encourage fish to eat them, it’s easy to persuade people to do so. And with restaurants on Cayman serving lionfish, and paying top dollar to divers, this whole death-by-deliciousness strategy was looking good. So I went back to find out how things have been working out.
The answer is, pretty well. Visiting dive sites I’d hit a couple of years ago, the absence of lionfish was noticeable. More significantly, when I did see them, they were usually smaller: Juveniles, not full-grown specimens. Departing from the more popular dive sites led to more sightings, but still things were a lot better than I would have expected.
Diving at Turtle Farm Reef, I chatted up a lionfish hunter who’d bagged several specimens, and he confirmed my impressions: The popular dive sites are mostly lionfish-free, and even the spaces in between are far less populated than you might have expected a few years ago when the lionfish population was exploding. On the other hand, he pointed out, when you go deeper than 100-120 fee—the maximum depths for recreational divers breathing air or Nitrox—lionfish are still plentiful. (Tech divers, who breathe special gas mixtures and/or use rebreathers, can achieve depths of several hundred feet, but there are fewer of them for good reason. Watch this video for more).
Still, keeping large sections of the reef clear of lionfish means that populations of native fish are preserved. It may not completely eliminate lionfish, but it certainly ensures that they don’t take over.
And market pressures may keep the lionfish in retreat. One night I went to Michael’s Genuine in Camana Bay, and tried to order their (delicious) lionfish appetizer. No dice; they were sold out. “We can’t get enough,” said my waitress.
That’s good news for the reef, even if it’s bad news for lionfish. And for diners.
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