Lion Fish
"if you can't beat them, eat them"
Lionfish are native to the tropical areas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In the 1980s, however, they found their way into the Caribbean, where they have no natural predators – partly because they have venomous spines that help make them unpalatable. They pair this with an almost unrivalled appetite and diversity of prey – eating up to 70 different species and being able to expand their stomach up to 30 times its empty size! This makes lionfish very successful in their newfound home – often to the expense of native fish, who are already under pressure due to marine ecosystem stress as a result of warming and acidifying oceans.
Luckily, lionfish are delicious! Whilst divers catching them and chefs preparing them must be careful of the spines, the flaky white flesh is totally safe to eat, and is like a firm halibut. Inventive chefs all over the Caribbean are now utilising lionfish in order to try and create the market necessary to create an economic – as well as an ecological – incentive to control their numbers. Their rallying cry has become: ‘If you can’t beat them, eat them!’
We can bring that energy to abundant species like deer, squirrel, american signal crayfish and mitten crab here in the UK, wherever their abundance is putting pressure on native ecosystems!