The Problems of Taking a Species to Market

Yesterday, the advocacy group Food & Water Watch released its 2011 Smart Seafood Guide. And high on the list of seafood that's OK to eat are such invasive species as lionfish, Asian carp, blue tilapia, and a few kinds of crab.

Some of these may not be well-known to gourmands, but all of them are pushing out the locals in various rivers, lakes and coastal areas around the country.

The environmental group wants to show they can be as tasty as they are pesky. So it enlisted hotshot chef Kerry Heffernan of South Gate Restaurant to cook up some.

In A Fish-Eat-Fish World, Order Asian Carp And Lionfish To Save The Rest

This article started me thinking about the ups and downs of creating a market for a species. Marketing a species has been proposed as the solution for invasives and endangered animals alike. The thinking with endangered animals is that once livelihoods depend on the resource it would be wise of those dependent on the species to make sure it continues. This has worked wonders in terms of money put into habitat by hunters for all the major game species such as deer, turkey and ducks. Have no doubt, several livelihoods depend on the influx of hunters to an area. The thought with invasives is to remove the harvest limits that keep populations from crashing and incentivize the capture of the species of interest. Both of these ideas have been used with mixed results.

One example that pops into my head is wild boars in much of the Eastern United States. Many eastern states have a year round hunting season on boars. They are not native to the area and can cause extensive problems when rooting around for grubs. Some places actively try to get rid of the species by paying someone to trap and kill the animals. The problem is that trapping to kill doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the people getting paid to kill the boars transport the live animals to other property where the owner wants to be able to hunt something, in this case boar, all year round despite the problems the species causes. Boars, being wild species, do not follow property lines and spread into the surrounding area.

Opening up fishing of lionfish and carp alone might not do the trick. In this example, the expected collapse of boar populations never occurs despite or maybe because of the hunting season put into place. All of this despite places like Smoky Mountain National Park killing a rumored three million of the animals in a single year.

The current problem with these species is there is no market but in trying to create a market the question turns to what do we do once there is one? I see a couple possible outcomes if a market for lionfish or Asian carp ever becomes established. The first is that demand spikes and the numbers of these species plummet. However, demand will not cease when the numbers fall. I imagine that people profiting from these species will either reintroduce the invasive to places it was over-fished from, recreating the problem, or start fishing the species in their native ranges to meet the demand. The problem of the market is that it never quite allows us to get rid of the invasive species as long as we succeed in perpetuating the demand and creating unintended consequences.