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Snake and eggs? Floridians could soon eat invasive pythons Python Bowl kicks off Friday in Florida Everglades Python Bowl kicks off Friday in Florida Everglades FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Donna Kalil estimates she’s eaten a dozen pythons in the last three years or so. That’s not including the python jerky, says Kalil, a python hunter for the South Florida Water Management District. “I eat that several times a week because I take it out with me on python hunts and I eat it out there.” State officials would like to see more people like Kalil putting pythons on the menu...

——Why We Wrote This—— How to counter invasive species, a common, and often intractable, problem? One entrepreneur’s clever approach offers lessons in finding solutions in the unlikeliest of places. If you can’t beat them, eat them. That is the common wisdom of many scientists, conservationists, and fishermen who dream of ridding the western Atlantic of invasive lionfish, a stunning aquarium fish that, when introduced in the wild, dominates and destroys reef ecosystems. However, catching lionfish has never been simple; they are not easily targeted by line or net fishing. Now, a surprising new invention may bring lionfish hunting to the...

The red lionfish (P. volitans) is a voracious predator in the Atlantic Ocean but furtive in its native Pacific. A new study shows evidence of rapid evolution when it arrived in the Atlantic. Credit: Michael Gäbler published under a Creative Commons license. ================================================================= What makes the red lionfish (Pterois volitans) such a successful and powerful invader in Atlantic Ocean waters compared to its rather lamblike existence in its native Pacific Ocean? A new North Carolina State University study examining two native lionfish regions in the Pacific and five invading regions in the Atlantic showed the greatest genetic similarities between lionfish...

Wanted dead, not alive: the lionfish. You can make $5,000 if you get rid of them After the first 25, you have to submit tails for the chance to collect the top prize. Tails can be submitted at numerous checkpoints throughout Florida, including in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Islamorada, Tavernier, Marathon, Key West and Boca Raton. Participants can also get a 2018 Lionfish Challenge T-shirt, commemorative coin and entry into the FWC Lionfish Hall of Fame. ... Over the last five years, some dozen South Florida restaurants began serving lionfish on their menus because the delicate, flaky fish, often...

Seemingly striking a blow for ecological balance, a Caribbean reef shark chomps on an invasive lionfish in the clear waters of Roatan Marine Park off the coast of Honduras. Working with park officials, local divers are attempting to give sharks a taste for the alien reef species, which are native to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. With no natural predators, lionfish populations have exploded throughout the waters of the Caribbean and U.S. Southeast since their accidental introduction by aquarium hobbyists a decade ago. In Honduras "local dive masters familiar with the sharks decided to try to turn them on to...

MIAMI (Reuters) – Florida marine conservationists have come up with a simple recipe for fighting the invading lionfish that is gobbling up local reef life -- eat them. The Key Largo-based REEF conservation organization has just released "The Lionfish Cookbook," a collection of 45 recipes which is the group's latest strategy to counter an invasion of the non-native reddish brown-striped fish in Florida waters. "It's absolutely good eating -- a delicacy. It's delicately flavored white meat, very buttery," Lad Akins, director of special projects for Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF), told Reuters. He authored the cookbook along with a professional...

When Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, no one gave much thought to the six exotic lionfish that spilt into Biscayne Bay as the storm smashed their Miami waterfront aquarium. Sixteen years later, thousands of the fish are wreaking havoc off America's east coast, leading a potentially catastrophic marine invasion. The highly poisonous hunter-killer, which is normally found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, is the first non-native fish to establish itself in the Atlantic, where it is eating its way through other species faster than they can breed. “They are eating almost anything that fits in their mouths,” said...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A maroon-striped marauder with venomous spikes is rapidly multiplying in the Caribbean's warm waters, swallowing native species, stinging divers and generally wreaking havoc on an ecologically delicate region. Researchers believe lionfish were introduced into the Atlantic in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew shattered a private aquarium and six of them spilled into Miami's Biscayne Bay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Biologists think the fish released floating sacs of eggs that rode the Gulf Stream north along the U.S. coast, leading to colonization of deep reefs off North Carolina and Bermuda. Lionfish have even...