Seems to me those might be the headlines in the papers of the near future.  Whether it is true or not remains to be seen.  I personally think there is some potential to that bold headline.  These fish are the trailer trash of the world’s coral, if reefs had Wal-Marts, these mass consumers of the reefs baby fishes could be the next entree in the hottest and most expensive restaurants throughout the world.

To tell you the truth, lionfish is very tasty.  This is another reason I think lionfish have the potential to make an impact in the seafood market. There is a ton of ways to cook this fish.  Of course there are quite a few variables left unknown that won’t allow us to see… yet.  In the meantime, I will keep going out and monitoring the reefs around here.  We have been in contact with some people lately, and it seems there is the beginnings of some organization internationally on trying some new ways to eradicate.

Because of the super fast explosion of these animals on the worlds many reefs, it looks like human interaction and predation may be one of the only known techniques that seem promising.  If that doesn’t change, commercial markets will be the only option for supporting the eradication.

Locally, because of the ease of capture, the fishing should be promoted and the young educated about how this fish could be utilized in a sustainable way.

Anyway, like I was sayin’, lionfish is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey’s uh, lionfish-kabobs, lionfish creole, lionfish gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple lionfish, lemon lionfish, coconut lionfish, pepper lionfish, lionfish soup, lionfish stew, lionfish salad, lionfish and potatoes, lionfish burger, lionfish sandwich. That- that’s about it.

Eventually we will build up the sides, put a shade cloth barrier to block the sun, and insert some frogs.

In Bioaccumulation:
The level at which a substance accumulates depends on the rate of uptake (eg: through the gills of a fish, contact with the skin)
How quickly the substance is removed, depends on the metabolic process, the lipid content of the organism and other environmental and physical factors
The more hydrophobic a substance is the more likely it is to bioaccumulate
If the pesticide level within an animal is high enough it can kill the animal
The pesticide is passed on to other organisms when the ones with pesticides contained in the fatty tissues are eaten (biomagnification)
The concentration of the pesticide is then increased as a predator will eat numerous of the prey

In order for biomagnification to occur, the pollutant must be:

• long-lived
• mobile
• soluble in fats
• biologically active

If a pollutant is short-lived, it will be broken down before it can become dangerous.  If it is not mobile, it will stay in one place and is unlikely to be taken up by organisms.  If the pollutant is soluble in water it will be excreted by the organism. Pollutants that dissolve in fats, however, may be retained for a long time.

Classic Example of Biomagnification: how DDT gets magnified as it passes through a food chain

The figure shows how DDT becomes concentrated in the tissues of organisms representing four successive trophic levels in a food chain.

The concentration effect occurs because DDT is metabolized and excreted much more slowly than the nutrients that are passed from one trophic level to the next. So DDT accumulates in the bodies (especially in fat). Thus most of the DDT ingested as part of gross production is still present in the net production that remains at that trophic level.
This is why the hazard of DDT to nontarget animals is particularly acute for those species living at the top of food chains.

For example,
spraying a marsh to control mosquitoes will cause trace amounts of DDT to accumulate in the cells of microscopic aquatic organisms, the plankton, in the marsh.
In feeding on the plankton, filter-feeders, like clams and some fish, harvest DDT as well as food. (Concentrations of DDT 10 times greater than those in the plankton have been measured in clams.)
The process of concentration goes right on up the food chain from one trophic level to the next. Gulls, which feed on clams, may accumulate DDT to 40 or more times the concentration in their prey. This represents a 400-fold increase in concentration along the length of this short food chain.
There is abundant evidence that some carnivores at the ends of longer food chains (e.g. ospreys, pelicans, falcons, and eagles) suffered serious declines in fecundity and hence in population size because of this phenomenon in the years before use of DDT was banned (1972) in the United States.

Effects at the organism or ecological level are usually considered to be an early warning indicator of potential human health impacts.

More reading.

This was one of my favorite TED talks, and certainly gives us some options for the future.

• Degradation – Ability to break down in the environment
  - the longer a pesticide takes to degrade, the greater the risk for water contamination
  - generally, complex chemicals like some organophosphates last longer since they can’t be broken down readily by soil microbes
  -  soil conditions that provide excellent habitat for microbial growth may also lead to more rapid rates of degradation
• Volatility – Ability to move into the air, eg., hormone herbicides
• Solubility in Water – Abilitty to leach into groundwater, e.g., metachlor can leach more readily than atrazine
• Adsorption – Binding characteristics with soil particles, e.g., triazines bond to soil particles
• Absorption – Ability to move into organisms or structures
• Bio-Accumulation – Ability to accumulate in body tissues.



Source: Technical Overview of Ecological Risk Assessment, US EPA, June 2009

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