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Lionfish Removal

Started by Guest_Mysteryman_* , Sep 25 2009 08:40 AM

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8 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_Mysteryman_*

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Posted 25 September 2009 - 08:40 AM

I was wondering if there was any viable way a guy could make a living at Atlantic Lionfish removal. Somebody should really make an effort to eradicate them, but doing it would be a full time job. A fulltime job? Hmmm...

I thought up a few things which on their own each probably wouldn't work, but all together might. Maybe. What do you think?

--Bounties--
As I understand it, there are some small organizations paying bounties for these.
--Venom--
Surely some lab someplace might want a good supply of the stuff?
--Fillets--
Lions are supposed to be very tasty, if dangerous to clean.

Do you think a guy could collect the venom, sell it, send the heads to the bounty-payers, and then ship the tasty gourmet fillets all over the country? While he was at it, I suppose he could collect a few other live specimens for the aquarium trade.

Any real possibility here, or just pure fantasy?

Edited by Mysteryman, 25 September 2009 - 08:41 AM.

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#2 Guest_hmt321_*

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Posted 25 September 2009 - 09:43 AM

Are they in the coastal area of Alabama?

I would start small and see where it goes, you may have to obtain commercial fishing licenses to sell any part of the fish to the general public though.

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#3 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 25 September 2009 - 09:48 AM

I saw an article roughly a year ago about guys supplementing income by pikeminnow fishing in the Columbia. They got paid something like $2.00 a fish as part of an eradication effort.

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#4 Guest_mikez_*

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Posted 27 September 2009 - 03:45 PM

Caught tailend of a TV piece about a dive club or something that had a lionfish spear fishing tournement.
I really couldn't believe how many there were! Even having read it here and elsewhere, I was unprepared to see how abundant they were.
Looked mighty easy to harvest. If they do become valuable, they'd be easy to catch.

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#5 Guest_Mysteryman_*

Guests

Posted 05 May 2010 - 11:22 PM

Well, well.. Lionfish are going for 12 bucks a pound wholesale, and the demand can't even be met. They are tasty, but even better, their flavor is mild enough to be very malleable, so a chef can easily give them pretty much any overall flavor he wants, which is proving very popular in high-end restaurants all over the place.

So, in short, yes, a guy CAN make a living at lionfishing if he can catch 4 per hour. Some people are saying already that this may be the lucky break the fishermen are looking for, since they can be caught without limit when the other fishing seasons are closed.

The downside is that some may try to "manage" them by letting the smaller ones go to grow bigger.

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#6 Guest_tiburon1975_*

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Posted 07 November 2011 - 12:43 PM

Well, well.. Lionfish are going for 12 bucks a pound wholesale, and the demand can't even be met. They are tasty, but even better, their flavor is mild enough to be very malleable, so a chef can easily give them pretty much any overall flavor he wants, which is proving very popular in high-end restaurants all over the place.

So, in short, yes, a guy CAN make a living at lionfishing if he can catch 4 per hour. Some people are saying already that this may be the lucky break the fishermen are looking for, since they can be caught without limit when the other fishing seasons are closed.

The downside is that some may try to "manage" them by letting the smaller ones go to grow bigger.

how you came up with that price/pound?? i have been trying to get customers for it but i don't have an idea of what the current market price is. could you please help? Thank you

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#7 littlen

NANFA Member

Washington, D.C.

Posted 07 November 2011 - 04:05 PM

"R.E.E.F." (Reef Environmental Education Foundation) does a lot of work with Lionfish and other invasive species removals (and other studies for that matter) throughout Florida and the Caribbean. They hold derbys in southern Florida and the Keys almost year round. The sad part is that the Lionfish bounce back so quickly and are so abundant that they are able to have so many derbys. They offer cash prises for most fish caught in a day, largest fish caught, smallest, etc. They have a lot of partnerships as well. Someone mentioned something about fishermen leaving the smaller ones alone so that they are able to grow up and are harvested when they have more meat to yield. One potential solution being tossed around is that the smaller ones are collected and sold in the pet trade rather than shipped over from the Pacific. Of course there is a huge demand and market for the filets, but you'd pretty much have to have an operation based in the Caribbean to catch enough to make it worth anything. They are found all the way up the Atlantic coast but the really dense areas are in the Caribbean. This is where you enter the political realm of shipping/transporting fish and/or filets from one country to another.

R.E.E.F. link:
http://www.reef.org/

Nick L.