Scientist advises eating lionfish meat to prevent them from invading

Lionfish is not actually a traditional dish in Greece. Many countries in the Mediterranean region, including Greece, and the Americas consider this an invasive alien species that seriously affects the ecosystem and needs to be eradicated. However, recently, the only restaurant on Elafonisos island (Greece) regularly serves lion fish. Shop owner Pavlos Liaros, 62 years old, often drives his own boat to fish, but unlike many other fishermen, he does not throw away the lionfish caught in his net. Instead, Liaros brought them back to make soup.

Previously, a series of solutions were proposed to slow the spread of lionfish. For example, RELIONMED, a project launched in 2017, employs about 100 divers to kill lionfish around shipwrecks, coral reefs and marine reserves in the Mediterranean. But according to the Cyprus Fisheries Agency, organizing regular fishing and extermination only helps native creatures have more time to recover, not a long-term solution.

In marine protected areas in the Caribbean, authorities lifted restrictions, allowing lionfish fishing. The Bahamas rewards lionfish culling competitions, with participating teams catching up to 2,000 fish a day, but it still doesn’t make a significant difference. Some companies test autonomous hunting robots, while engineers build lionfish traps, but large-scale deployment faces major logistical and cost difficulties.

Many environmentalists are looking for a closer solution. “The most viable option is to eat them,” Karachle told Washington Post. Karachle encouraged fishermen to catch large quantities, saying this would slow down the growth of lionfish.

“By putting invasive animals like lionfish on the menu, we can turn challenges into opportunities for the seafood industry, while helping limit the threat to the environment,” Costas Kadis, European Union (EU) Fisheries Commissioner, told AP.

NOAA urges: “If you can’t defeat them, eat them.” The poisonous spines of the lionfish can be safely removed, leaving behind perfectly edible tender flesh. Some American restaurants already serve this dish. GW Fins restaurant in New Orleans even puts whole fried lionfish on its special menu.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) also sponsors lionfish cooking demonstrations by chefs in Greece. On the two large islands of Rhodes and Crete, many markets sell this type of fish.

For most Cypriots, local pubs with an extensive snack menu of different types of fish are very popular. Although lionfish is not yet popular, some pubs and seafood restaurants are starting to include this dish on their menus. They also have the advantage of competitive prices. At the Larnaca port fish market, they are half the price of more popular fish like sea bass.

Stephanos Mentonis, owner of a famous seafood restaurant in Larnaca, put lionfish on the snack menu to introduce them to more diners. Mentonis said most customers were unfamiliar with lionfish, but he thought their meat was tender and spongy, comparable to perennial pub favorites such as sea bream.

“When they tasted it, it was just as delicious as other types of fish,” he told AP.

Lionfish (Pterois) is native to the tropical waters of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. This predator has an impressive appearance with many colorful stripes. They have rows of poisonous spines running down their spines and brightly spread fins. “They are very beautiful,” said Paraskevi Karachle, an ichthyologist at the Greek Center for Marine Research.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said that lionfish invaded coastal waters of the US Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico in the 1980s, then spread. This is the first documented case of an alien marine fish successfully establishing populations in the Northwest Atlantic/Caribbean region. According to AZ Animalsthe scientific community is not sure about the route of entry, but it is possible that they escaped from aquariums and fish tanks. Today, they inhabit coral reefs, shipwrecks and other structures in the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Not only in the Americas, lionfish also entered the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal more than a decade ago. The Mediterranean Fisheries Commission said last year that the sea was warming about 20% faster than the global average. In this context, researchers predict that the lionfish’s territory, which is expanding day by day, could reach Spain.

The Mediterranean, like any other sea, is full of alien creatures, but lionfish have particularly serious consequences and have the potential to upset this vast sea that has nurtured civilizations for millennia. They eat shrimp, crabs and smaller fish with stomachs that can expand 30 times. Lionfish are also very durable, can go a month without food and scare off enemies with rows of poisonous spines. They reproduce very quickly, females can lay up to two million eggs per year.

“They will cause great disruption to the ecosystem. This is the fastest invasive fish in the world,” Jason Hall-Spencer, a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth, told Washington Post.

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), just one lionfish living on a coral reef can reduce the number of new native fish entering the population by up to 79%. Another harmful effect is that they eat species that are useful for the development of coral reefs, causing coral reefs to weaken. In addition, they also hunt prey that is eaten by snapper, grouper and many other commercially valuable native fish species, negatively affecting commercial and recreational fishing activities.