May 20, 2015 — The North Carolina Sea Grant organization hosted a unique taste testing dinner Wednesday night at Bistro By The Sea in Morehead City. The menu featured lionfish as the key ingredient.
Lionfish are the most dominant predators in the North Carolina marine waters thanks to their poisonous spines. They typically prey on popular commercial fish like grouper and snapper– but this posing a problem for commercial fisherman.
Now the commercial fish are becoming less available and the exotic lionfish population continues to grow.
“What we want to be able to do here is to eradicate or at least manage that population and the only way to do that is to harvest them– right now you spear them but we’re looking for commercial opportunities,” says Barry Nash, North Carolina Sea Grant.