A fish we can eat without guilt

I was unaware that the striking brown-and-white striped, long-spined lionfish had turned into a bad example of a nasty invasive species. Now, the story goes, it's being fished (it can only be spearfished, unfortunately) as much as possible, and it's a good fish to eat.

How to conquer the invasive lionfish? Saute it.

"This fish is delicious," said seafood distributor Sean Dimin, co-owner of Sea to Table, who visited Beaufort last year and learned that divers were catching it in "lionfish rodeos" and cooking it on the beach. ...

Distributors such as Dimin and David Johnson, president of Traditional Fisheries, are still trying to work out the economics of selling lionfish because catching it remains costly and labor-intensive. Johnson, who is based in Minnesota but whose Mexican brothers-in-law work as spear fishermen, has organized 24 fishermen near Cancun to catch lionfish.

"It's spearing, spearing, spearing," said Johnson, who delivered a shipment of lionfish to Seaver.

The article notes that filleting a fish with venomous spines is a challenge (shouldn't bother the Japanese, who make ornamental fish dishes out of the fugu (pufferfish), and if they included the neurotoxin gland, it would kill the diner; and as noted above, supply is a problem.

So I have a solution:

Tell the Japanese that lionfish sushi tastes better than toro (bluefin tuna). That'll solve this problem in a couple of years!