European green crabs, an invasive species, have come to the Pacific Northwest. We’re not allowed to catch European green crabs in Washington, for fear of cases of mistaken identity. (With what? I’ve only seen Dungeness and red rock crabs here.) Meanwhile, Oregon is publishing cooking tips:
Mealtime Management: Using Culinary Creativity to Remove Invasive European Green Crabs [.pdf]
Further (non-culinary) reading from up here. (The Lummi reservation is maybe 15 miles south of here.)
OPINION: WHY EATING INVASIVE SPECIES IS A BAD IDEA.
There are lots of cites on the internet, both pro and con, about eating invasive species.
If the invasive species can be made palatable and actually solve the problem, I don’t see why not…
You know what I always say: Got invaders? Eat them!
Just starting the article:
Even if harvest mortality is not just compensatory, it must impose a huge, consistent toll on reproductive individuals to overcome reproduction, and a characteristic feature of invasive species is a very high reproductive rate.
The reason invasive species have high reproductive rates is that they don’t have their usual predators. No reason why we shouldn’t be the predator!
Around here, the local park system has very strict rules against removing any flora or fauna from the parks. My mom makes a very tasty pesto from garlic mustard, an invasive plant which she harvests from the parks. She’s never made any secret of what she’s doing, and tells any park ranger she sees that she’s doing so. She’s always gotten a response of “Well, technically, you’re not allowed to do that, but go ahead.”.
Lionfish have been invading the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. There is a campaign to get people to eat them:
In 2010, NOAA (which also encourages people to report lionfish sightings, to help track lionfish population dispersal)[78] began a campaign to encourage the consumption of the fish.[49] The “Lionfish as Food” campaign encourages human hunting of the fish as the only form of control known to date. Increasing the catch of lionfish could not only help maintain a reasonable population density, but also provide an alternative fishing source to overfished populations, such as grouper and snapper. The taste is described as “buttery and tender”.[79][80] To promote the campaign, the Roman Catholic Church in Colombia agreed to have their clergy’s sermons suggest to their parishioners (84% of the population) eating lionfish on Fridays, Lent, and Easter, which proved highly successful in decreasing the invasive fish problem.[81]
When properly filleted, the naturally venomous fish is safe to eat. Some concern exists about the risk of ciguatera food poisoning (CFP) from consumption of lionfish, and the FDA included lionfish on the list of species at risk for CFP when lionfish are harvested in some areas tested positive for ciguatera. However, no cases of CFP from consumption of lionfish have been verified, and published research has found that the toxins in lionfish venom may be causing false positives in tests for presence of ciguatera.[82][83] The Reef Environmental Education Foundation provides advice to restaurant chefs on how they can incorporate the fish into their menus. The NOAA calls the lionfish a “delicious, delicately flavored fish” similar in texture to grouper.[49] Cooking techniques and preparations for lionfish include deep-frying, ceviche, jerky, grilling, and sashimi.
We don’t eat invasive nutria in Oregon, though Louisiana does.
Here in Michigan, removing garlic mustard from parks is a public service. My wife and I helped our son remove garlic mustard from a local park when he did public service work as a Cub Scout. We filled several trash bags full, reeking of the smell of garlic.
BTW, does your mom make her pesto with raw garlic mustard? Just an FYI that the plant contains cyanide- just trace levels but in first year plants can be high enough to be toxic. This site coincidentally has a garlic mustard pesto recipe, but recommends blanching the leaves first to reduce cyanide levels.
https://www.natureupnorth.org/justmynature/jacob-malcomb/garlic-mustard-edible-invasive
The irksome thing about some of these articles concerning environmental problems is the way they shoot down any proposed solutions. “But spearfishing these invasive lionfish may damage the coral reefs.” It’s like all they want to do is bitch.
Yep. They don’t even want to try.
Was there a suggestion that the more you consume of them, the more they reproduce? Like they have a mechanism that tells them that a great number of their friends have disappeared so they have to get busy?
That’s what the opinion piece seems to be suggesting. ‘If you kill them, they’ll just reproduce more.’
“IT’S A COOKBOOK!!!”
Around here at the entrance to parks, we actually have signs with pictures of garlic mustard, and instructions to destroy it if we see it. It doesn’t say anything about taking it with you, but I’m assuming that they wouldn’t mind.
I think the reason they don’t encourage everyone to harvest or otherwise destroy the garlic mustard is that they don’t want idiots who can’t tell the difference destroying native plants. But when someone’s already carrying a bundle of the stuff and has recipes, they probably figure they know what they’re looking for.
And I think the pesto recipe is raw, but pesto’s not something you eat a lot of at once, so the cyanide probably isn’t a problem. Hasn’t killed me yet, anyway.
Bad science.
Not only that, apparently they are delicious too. Eat those fuckers! I certainly would if I had access.
Here’s Warren Sapp and the Deer Meat For Dinner dude catching a mess of them and then cleaning and crushing them. Sapp is hilarious.
For what it’s worth, I think the article makes good points. IMHO the point they’re making is that treating the culinary option as a silver bullet is foolish. And, you know, I agree. I’ve seen people bring it up on several cooking shows - but they never discuss it’s actual projected success rate.
The other points, well, less so. They aren’t wrong: make it an attractive nuisance as it were and there are few reasons to actually eradicate it, and may make it popular. This isn’t 100% wrong, but are probably problems that can be resolved with legislation, and are long term, non-serious problems when dealing with an invasive species.
Overall, the article feels like a lot of “we don’t have a perfect solution, so let’s pooh-pah a partial solution.”
But the caution of saying “we’ll just eat them all” as the one and only fix is a solid point.
Exactly.
Ugh, this video thumb had me totally tricked. I’d always assumed that lion fish were going to be tough to rein in because theyre so small. I thought they’re about hand sized. But this thumbnail shows them hauling this monstrous thing from the water and I was intrigued. If they get that big, maybe there’s a chance. But they don’t and this was pretty much clickbait.
No, they’re hand sized. This is a video about rich people having fun. I’m sure that lion fish as food is great but we won’t be able to get rid of them, or even change their numbers with this kind of sport fishing. There’s no commercial viability.
And they’re venomous.