Lionfish: Invasive and Delicious

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Just before dawn, the first orange and pink streaks of morning shoot out from the horizon. RX at Sea, a sleek 28-foot dive boat, slices through the glassy surface of the Intracoastal Waterway, having just left a marina north of Wilmington. The world feels hushed, an air of hope around the boat as the crew—James and Sarah Doss, the proprietors of RX Chicken & Oysters, and Matt Jewell, who manages their oyster farm—prepare the boat for the cruise offshore.

The radio crackles to life.

“Radio check,” James Doss says. “RX at Sea. Radio check.”

The Dosses make this trip a couple of times a week to keep their restaurant stocked with fresh fish. With the bow pointed east, they are setting their sights on one of the Atlantic’s most invasive species: lionfish.

“They’re venomous,” Sarah Doss says. “They’re invasive. And they’re delicious.”

For two years, the Dosses’ fishing expeditions have targeted lionfish, whose striking red and white color scheme resembles a clownfish. They first showed up off the North Carolina coast in the early 2000s. Researchers think they were released or escaped from homes or public aquariums in the 1980s and ‘90s.

These fish are very resilient and can thrive in a variety of environments. They quickly established populations along the southeastern coast of the United States and have since spread throughout the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Their spread has been facilitated by their voracious appetite, lack of natural predators in the Atlantic, and ability to reproduce rapidly.

The rapacious eaters feast on native fish populations, particularly reef-dwellers like snappers and groupers, altering local ecosystems in devastating ways. And they generally can’t be caught with a rod and reel—you have to dive 100 feet to spear them. The Dosses use a three-pronged spear to impale a fish, then put it in a large plastic tube. When the spear is pulled out of the tube, a little flap acts as a gate and blocks the opening and pulls the fish off the prongs.

The Dosses—who are married—are up at dawn to plunge into the Atlantic before working a busy Friday shift at their restaurant. 

The duo have secured commercial fishing and dealer licenses, allowing them to sell their catch directly. The fish have become one of RX Chicken & Oysters’ signature offerings since reopening after a renovation in 2023. James Doss, the restaurant’s executive chef, has used lionfish in a myriad of ways. Pan seared with grits is very popular. They’ve also put it in tacos, on deviled eggs, or as a ceviche, which they can make on the boat. Their lionfish dishes are so popular that they sold out in minutes at a recent farmer’s market and often only last on the menu for a day.

“We kind of can’t keep up,” said his wife, who manages the front of the house during service. “We’ve had people get upset with us when we run out.”

Each dish also contributes to helping preserve the balance of North Carolina’s coastal waters. Researchers have found that a single lionfish can diminish the population of native reef fish by up to 79 percent. The presence of lionfish here has been associated with a 45 percent decline in the Tomtate population, said Dr. Susanna López-Legentil, an associate professor in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at UNC-Wilmington.

López-Legentil studies marine invasive species, particularly sea squirts (including two new species named after her). She teaches a section on lionfish in her biological invasions course. 

“There are few physical barriers in the sea and many places for lionfish to hide, and lionfish populations are already too widespread for us to attempt eradication,” said López-Legentil. “I am afraid the lionfish is here to stay, and if nothing changes, lionfish will continue to affect our native fish populations severely.”

Hunting invasive plants and animals for consumption is not a novel concept. Besides lionfish, both Asian carp and European green crab have also been fished for food to curb population numbers.

“I am hopeful people will try and love eating lionfish,” López-Legentil said. “We have successfully decimated populations of many fish species we like to eat, so why not overfishing lionfish? And we wouldn’t even have to feel bad about it.”

The Hunting Grounds

It doesn’t take long for the shoreline to fade. The boat ride out to the fishing grounds takes several hours. Jewell rests on a beanbag chair, while the Dosses sit side-by-side on a bench seat as the autopilot takes them to the first dive spot, a new site, still unexplored. 

Lionfish prefer the depths of the continental shelf, which extends about 50 miles offshore. At 35 miles out, the Dosses are still on its outer edge, where depths range from 100 to 300 feet.

The crew knows where to find the lionfish, which often cluster around both natural and artificial reefs. These underwater havens provide ample hiding spots and hunting grounds for the invasive species. The trio huddles around the depth finder screen showing the ocean floor below. They’re looking for contours, spotting a ridge and a cloud of baitfish above it. The ocean floor is a tapestry of ledges and rock outcroppings, promising a good hunt.

Since they will be around 100 feet underwater, their dives are limited to 30 minutes before they must surface for at least an hour. The average take varies, but on a good day they can surface with 20 fish per diver. The Dosses plan to dive two or three times, depending on their catch.

While Jewell takes the helm, the two divers don old, threadbare wetsuits. These are work wetsuits, not the sleek attire of recreational divers. She carries a 3-foot tube marked “lion tamer” and a spear with a trio of prongs. He carries a spear gun. He snaps a yellow inflatable buoy to his harness.

“See the yellow one?” he asks Jewell. “If it comes up, it will be with a big fish. Come and get it.”

While the couple is there for the lionfish, they won’t pass up a chance to spear a grouper. Bea, their dog, watches as they pull on heavy air tanks and slide their feet into fins. The boat drifted off the mark as they geared up.

“Matt,” James Doss says. “Go ahead and put us on it.”

“Yessir,” Jewell says, putting the boat in gear and motoring back to the mark on the chart.

The ocean is almost flat, and the water is clear. Back on the spot, the Dosses put in their regulators, the mouthpiece that lets them breathe underwater. Bea starts to bark, which she often does in the moments before a dive. With a nod, the pair fall backward off the boat. For a moment, their figures are visible under the water. Sarah Doss’s purple fins stand out but soon are swallowed by the infinite blue. 

Jewell watches over the boat, timing the dive, and keeping close to a red “diver below” buoy that surfaces a few minutes after the pair disappears. It is tethered to James Doss’s rig, signaling their location.

Down below, the couple enters a new world. Video of the dives looks alien and otherworldly with massive stone outcroppings and sandy plateaus. Besides lionfish, massive groupers glide by. In the crevices and under rock outcroppings, the lionfish congregate. While beautiful in the water with vibrant colors and a halo of venomous spines that looks like a lion’s mane, the fish are not smart. Being at the top of the food chain makes them complacent. The divers don’t even have to chase them.

“They just sit there,” she notes. “They don’t know to be afraid.”

Take What You Eat

Thirty minutes after disappearing below the surface, she emerges with a half-dozen lionfish. Her husband has a pair of red groupers. Back on board, they dump the fish into a cooler and cover them with ice. The chef carefully handles each one, using a knife to point out the sharp needle-like spines. They are full of a venom that causes a range of symptoms from mild irritation to severe pain. In rare cases, it can be fatal.

“They’re like hypodermic needles,” he says.

They get a lot of questions about the lionfish barbs at the restaurant. 

“People worry that the fish are poisonous,” said Sarah Doss. “They’re not. The barbs have venom, but it doesn’t affect the meat.” 

Between the three dives, the group drops lines baited with raw squid. The weighted lines go straight to the bottom, and it doesn’t take long to get a bite. It is less fishing and more catching as the trio haul up white grunts (called grapy snapper at the fish market) and porgy. 

They don’t keep all the fish; everyone is conscious of keeping the fishing grounds healthy. But the ones that make it in the cooler with the lionfish will be on Friday’s menu. Jewell pulls up a large red porgy between the dives.

“How many tacos do you think this will make?” he asks.

The chef gives it a look.

“With a two-ounce serving size, you can make a lot of tacos from one,” he says.

With a cooler full of fish and a long night at the restaurant on the horizon, they head back to shore around 2 p.m.

As the RX at Sea motors through the marina, a gray-haired fisherman in a long-sleeved Huk fishing shirt motors past on another fishing boat. 

“Catch any lionfish?”

“Yep,” James Doss replies.

“Good,” the fisherman says.

Fishermen coming out of the Hampstead marina know that when they drop a line offshore, the grouper or snapper they hook is there at least in part because the Dosses speared and served another lionfish.