By donating invasive lionfish to Gainesville dinner tables, a local conservation group hopes to call attention to the invasive species.
For one month starting Saturday, 14 local restaurants will serve lionfish dishes as a part of the inaugural Lionfish Invasion Tour, organized by conservation group ReefSavers.
The point, said Joe Glass, the president and founder of the group, is to educate the public about the threat lionfish pose to marine ecosystems.
“The whole goal of the tour is awareness,” Glass said. “What’s going to come out of the tour are funds we can put back into the lionfish-removal community.”
ReefSavers will donate about 10,000 fish to the restaurants in exchange for their revenues.
Among the participating restaurants are Dragonfly Sushi and The Top, he said.
Lionfish, known for their poisonous spines, were released into the Atlantic Ocean in the 1980s, and a lack of predators kept the lionfish reproducing and eating, said Maia McGuire, an Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Florida Sea Grant agent for Flagler County. Over the years, the problem has only worsened as their population grows.
When Dave Piasecki, the general manager of Dragonfly, heard of the Lionfish Invasion Tour, he quickly jumped onboard.
Serving lionfish, which is not often eaten, would give his chefs a chance to experiment while also helping the environment, he said.
“It’s not a money-making scheme,” Piasecki said. “You’ve got to look at it from the environmental standpoint.”
By the end of the tour, ReefSavers hopes at least a quarter of participating restaurants will keep lionfish on their menus, Glass said.
Despite barely promoting the upcoming event, he said word of the tour has already spread through the environmentalist community. He has been invited to host similar events in other Florida cities, including Pensacola, Naples and Panama City, he said.
The lionfish community is small, so once someone starts making an impact, people hear about it, Glass said.
