Lionfish: If you can't beat 'em - eat 'em? Maybe not.

[Origami]

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/26/12423879-eat-lionfish-sure-but-beware-of-the-nasty-toxins?lite

 

Excerpts highlighted below for posterity. [bracketed, italic and emphasis, mine.]

 

Eat lionfish? Sure, but beware of the nasty toxins

Credit to Mark Ralston/AFP & JoNel Aleccia

 

A federal plan to battle invasive lionfish by dishing them up on America’s dinner plates may have backfired with the news that the flamboyantly-finned creatures can harbor a potentially dangerous neurotoxin.

 

Two years ago, officials with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, launched a well-publicized campaign ... “If we can’t beat them, let’s eat them."

 

[The intent was to use the market to help control the ecological impact of this voracious predator. But, then, the FDA steps in and says, "Not so fast...."]

 

But another government agency, the Food and Drug Administration, now frowns on the “Eat Lionfish” campaign after tests of nearly 200 lionfish show that more than a quarter exceed federal levels for a toxin that can cause ciguatera, a potentially dangerous fish food poisoning.

 

[The FDA goes on to cite statistics....]

 

Of 194 fish tested, 42 percent showed detectable levels of ciguatoxin and 26 percent were above the FDA’s illness threshold of 0.1 parts per billion.

 

[What are the symptoms of ciquatoxin poisoning? Kind of like food poisoning, but with some twists.]

 

...diarrhea, vomiting and fatigue – but also neurological problems such as painfully tingling hands and feet, a feeling of having loose teeth, and, oddest of all, a reversed sense of temperature.

 

“Whatever I touched, if it was hot, it would feel cold. If it was cold, it felt hot,” ciguatera victim Pat Schroeder of Beaumont, Texas, told msnbc.com three years ago. “I couldn’t walk on the tile floor. It felt like it was burning me.”

 

[Ooooh. Wierd.]

 

[A researcher at NOAA goes on to rebut (rather weakly, in my opinion)...]

 

“I was not surprised to hear that lionfish contain some toxin.”

 

[adding...]

 

“The best way to solve the lionfish problem is to sauté them,” he said.

 

No one wants to get ciguatera, but harvesting lionfish for the dinner table might be one way to preserve the ecosystem.

 

“The idea of trying to control the lionfish problem by eating them is a great one, and whatever small risk there is is outweighed by the benefit,” says Dimin, whose group co-sponsored the “Eat Lionfish” campaign.

 

[so, there you have it. Eat 'em or not. But, if you do, and if running to the bathroom afterwards feels like you're running on hot coals, you'll know you're a victim of ciquatera poisoing. Revenge of the Lionfish.

[Coral Hind]

Wow, those symtoms sound terrible! I'll make sure not eat any of that.

[DaveS]

Not a huge surprise. Anything at the top of the food chain has a chance of causing ciguatera. Lionfish are clearly high up in the food chain to be the invasive species it has become.

 

I got a case of ciguatera food poisoning once a while back. Thought it was a long night of regular food poisoning until the tingling hands and feet and loose teeth sensations set in. Those lasted for a few days. I still distinctly recall how it made it tough to hold an ice cold beer....

 

Funny that dinoflagellates are the toxin behind it. Guess we have some tanks around here that have ciguatera potential!

[Origami]

Thought it was a long night of regular food poisoning until the tingling hands and feet and loose teeth sensations set in. Those lasted for a few days. I still distinctly recall how it made it tough to hold an ice cold beer....

Loose teeth sensations?!

 

Difficult to hold your beer?

 

Reasons enough to think twice!

 

Wait, if an ice cold beer feels hot, would a warm beer feel ice cold? Maybe there's a compromise here! But, then again, there are all those other symptoms....

[Sharkey18]

I find it amazing that we can so easily decimate any species we want to keep, (salmon, tuna, bangaii cardinals etc.) but can't figure out a way to destroy an invasive one.

 

Put a bounty on it, or somehow make it valuable ( apparently NOT by eating it!) and we will kill it off in a year. Seriously, what would it take? $3 per fish....

 

Someone should start a lion fish bounty fund. I for one would be delighted to get a "hunting" license and spear the buggers.

[wogga]

+1

 

Airfare/extraneous travel to the keys: a few hundred bucks

 

Paying your airfare in speared lionfish: priceless

[Integral9]

The problem I see is that not every country in the Carribean is participating in this. Bonaire in particular, won't even let you go near the water w/ a spear gun. They ask that you tag the location you see them. I don't know how that's effective; seems more like organized littering to me.

[Sharkey18]

It's my understanding that everyone is VERY nervous about allowing anyone to hunt anything. They are concerned that it will make it easier for people to catch a lot more than lion fish and it will certainly be harder to spot people hunting parrot fish vs. no hunting at all.

 

In many locations only the local dive operators are allowed to spear / catch them. So a tiny number of people vs. a lot of lion fish.

 

However, if they don't do something fast they won't have to worry about people hunting other fish because there won't be ANY other fish... THEN maybe we can hunt lion fish.