Tastes like Chicken: a unique solution to the Lionfish Invasion

[The Chairman]

Look at this piece I found on Diver Wire today: Tastes Like Chicken! Lionfish Roundup Delivers Unique Environmental Solution

I had to let the concept sit a bit before I was able to digest it! But the tooth of the matter is, if we make lion fish a sought after dish, the economic mechanisms alone will help us to get rid of them. I love it!

 

[Teamcasa]

Maybe take this track:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/4500674-post12.html

 

[Chad Carney]

Nice sized fish on the top of the row!

SE FL is becoming a good place to pop one too.

Chad

 

[TSandM]

Many years ago, when I was in college, I knew a fellow who graduated in invertebrate zoology and went to work for the State of California. One of the first issues he was asked to evaluate was a proposal to import a predator to help control the brown snail. The brown snail is not native to CA, but is in fact the French eating snail, which was imported and got loose, and is an enormous crop pest. The proposal was to bring in a predator snail which keeps the brown snail under control in France, but my friend concluded that there was no way to know that the predator wouldn't end up preferring the few remaining native species, so he nixed the proposal. His solution was to get HUMANS interested in eating snails, as we fairly effectively exterminate our preferred prey . . . So all the potlucks our apartment complex had ended up involving some dish normally prepared with molluscs of other kinds, which Larry would make with snails instead.

He didn't get many converts, and snails are still a crop pest.

Lionfish will have to be very tasty, to make catching something venomous economically attractive to commercial fishermen.

 

[Scott L]

I have no scientific background so don't shoot me for asking a foolish question but is it a possibilty that Lionfish can be genetically engineered in captivity to alter the makeup of this fish such that when it breeds with lionfish in the wild the result could be a new version that can no longer reproduce or does so in much lower numbers?

 

[Chad Carney]

Does anybody have any data about whether these fish bite on a hook & line?

Commercial spearfisherman are a rare breed, but if lionfish are tasty enough, recreational spearos might just take a liking to them.

Lots of fish present us with problems, usually easy enough to overcome.

Chad

 

[H2Andy]

what we need to do is to equip divers with miniature chairs and little whips ...

 

[Johnoly]

From 10 feet to 130 feet it's easy for recreational divers to spear them. The problem is that lionfish have been spotted to 300 feet and one sub spotted it well past 500 feet.

We're going to need a longer vacumm cleaner hose, cause this problem is going to suck.

 

[Cave Diver]

Does anybody have any data about whether these fish bite on a hook & line?

 

[Missdirected]

There has been a recipe thread started here: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/florida-conch-divers/287885-lionfish-recipes.html