8/26/09

Morehead City NC man makes effort to educate about the lionfish problem

here is a letter I recently received :
Hi Maurice,

As an introduction, my name is Niels Lindquist. I live in Morehead City, NC and am a Professor of Marine Sciences at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences. I've been diving here off the NC coast since 1989 and witnessed the beginning of the NC lionfish invasion in 2000. I've also been diving around San Salvador for many years and watched as the lionfish moved in beginning in 2006. What an on-going disaster!

I've enjoyed looking over your website and videos. We need as many people out there as possible trying to cull the lionfish populations and working to create culinary-based markets for the fish.

Like you and your friends, my friends and I have been whacking lionfish in both NC and the Bahamas. I have some colleagues doing funded lionfish research, but for me, observing, catching and eating lionfish is not university related research. This keeps me from having to deal with the university's Animal Care and Use Committee.

I too have posted a few lionfish-related videos on youtube and just wanted to draw your attention and that of your website visitors to them. One is just a short clip of spearing lionfish on a dive in San Salvador and another one of an impromptu lionfish capture in the Florida Keys. Put a nice soundtrack on that one.

The first one in the list below is one that I posted a few weeks ago. It chronicles a trip off the NC coast during which I speared a batch of lionfish and tried a new method for detoxifying them. Basically, just a light freezing accomplished by placing speared lionfish in an iced salt brine seems to do the job. Relatively easy and only simple materials needed. Please excuse the first couple of words of the video title "About time" as this was put up there to attract attention. I've notice that youtube videos that include a catchy or unusual phrasing seem to get more hits. It too was a jab at me because it took me much longer than intended to edit and post the video.

Keep up the great work educating people about the lionfish problem and providing information allowing the safe capture and preparation and delicious recipes.

Cheers, Niels Lindquist


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMBE7zWZDgk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMBE7zWZDgk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOwDUFSG1_k

Please watch these great underwater videos

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

some cruising friends (sailboat) just put me on to your blog, after they read MY blog post from yesterday about lionfish off of Providenciales, in the Turks and Caicos Islands. I posted a bunch of photos and a video on a trip to an old airplane wreck from Sunday.

Thank you for all the info. Spearfishing is illegal here, technically, although I think if one were just spearing lionfish and nothing else, the locals would be okay with it. That's just my guess as an expat resident, it's not a legal opinion. Spears are illegal here.

I plan to go have a word with the DECR here and see if they will write me up an endorsement on my fishing license to allow me to just spear lionfish. It might work.

If you want to see the photos, they are at my blog site ( http://2gringos.blogspot.com/ ) I think the largest one I saw was not much bigger than my hand.

I can't wait to try these things in a meal.

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