I’m hunting mostly in the Caribbean and Florida. I’ve never seen it on the menu in town, if it were I’d definitely frequent that restaurant!! I bring home coolers of the stuff from Florida hunting trips, then we have giant like 100+ people over for civiche, grilled, fried, pan fried, baked, fish cakes, stir fried, I mean you name it we make it for that party. Everybody is very upset that we were unable to do that this past summer due to covid.
Best part is, I’m 16 so when the other divers see a little girl with a spear slaughtering lion fish by the dozen, I get extra snacks on the boat :). It is really annoying though when dive masters try to put a leash on me because they assume that I don’t know what I’m doing because I’m young. If it’s a 12 hour diving trip we usually grill some up for lunch on the dive boat, nothing better than lion fish that were alive 10 minutes before being on the grill. I hope everybody can try it someday and I really wish we would start exporting the meat to at least the inner US from Florida, such a delicious fish and if there was demand for the meat I bet we wouldn’t have a lion fish issue by 2025
Where do I sign up? Seriously. If there isnt a line of certified divers waiting to do this and pay money to do this I would be shocked. Spearing invasive species while big alpha predators that are smarter than we give them credit for hug your flippers waiting for snack. 11 on the 1-10 cool scale.
Every time I’m down in fl I try to find a place to eat lion fish but unfortunately have had no success. I think people are afraid to eat it so most places don’t offer it. Which is just silly.
You have to get certified on each of the Caribbean islands individually. Most dive schools in Florida will do it for you. Most of the time the class is free but they charge you like $50 for a spear. I’m certified in the Cayman Islands, Florida, Roatan, Curaçao, Belize, Honduras, Mexico, Aruba, and Bonaire
It’s a little harder to find on the mainland but many places will definitely cook it for you if you bring them a fish. If you’re not a diver, you can almost definitely ask them to bring back a few for you and they will do so. I have fulfilled many of these requests, as I encourage people to eat them so divers have more incentive to kill them. Heck if you pay divers $5 a fish then they’ll bring you back a bucket! Many seafood restaurants in Florida are happy to cook them for you and usually charge about $30.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll def give that a go next time I’m down there. Have been wanting to eat lionfish for years!
I mean...ciguatera poisoning is no joke. but the spines can just be scissored off
I cut them off with scissors, it’s true about the sting, really not fun. Even after being hit a couple dozen times it hurts pretty bad. Like burning your hand on the stove and getting stabbed at the same time.
