Will Greece save itself from a lionfish invasion by making carpaccio? • FRANCE 24 English

Will Greece save itself from a lionfish invasion by making carpaccio? • FRANCE 24 English

The turquoise waters off the Pelpines coast are becoming warmer and fishermen in this small great town are noticing. Every day in Neapoli is a battle to retrieve fish. One that Yuanas Kapacos feels he is losing. Lately his halls have dramatically reduced. Before I used to catch up to 10 to 12 kilos of fish here. Today the amount of fish has decreased by at least 50%. A hardy invasive threat has been proliferating in the area for more than 2 years. It’s called the lion fish. It is very beautiful. The problem is that it eats all the other fish eggs. It has 18 venomous spines and no predators in the Mediterranean Sea. Here comes another one. And you see today we caught a seabbream. Three to four good fish. From the grower to a tentacle fish and the rest are lion fish. We have 1 2 3 4 5 6. A hard to beat opponent. The lion fish can eat up to six times its own weight. It reproduces every 2 or 3 days and each year a single female can lay a monstrous 2 million eggs. Add to that its life expectancy is 30 years. The lion fish is native to the Indian Ocean, but as the climate has shifted, it has been attracted to warmer waters in the Mediterranean and entered through the Suez Canal. It was first spotted in Israel in 1991, then Lebanon in 2012 before it spread to Cyprus in 2014. Now it’s taken hold in southern Greece. [Music] Here in the port of Neapoli, the entire fishing community is affected. Is that all you caught? Yes, that’s all. Not even enough to pay for the boat’s fuel. Little known and considered dangerous, lion fish do not sell here. The dozens of kilos caught daily end up in the bin. If we can’t sell this fish, I want to give up my fishing license and do something else. I don’t know. Maybe be a waiter because the sea it’s finished. But there is one solution. If you can’t beat it, eat it. Nearby on the small Greek island of Alpha Nissos, an environmental organization is trying to create a supply chain. The first step is to remove the spine, which is the hardest and most dangerous as they cause a lot of pain. And there you have it. Now the fish is harmless. Matteo Cvesi, an Italian volunteer, visits restaurant kitchens to explain how to prepare lion fish, which has many qualities. They only eat small young fish that do not yet have heavy metals in their bodies. It flesh is truly excellent. It can be filleted and there’s quite a lot of flesh compared to its size. So, it is a fleshy and tender fish ideal for capacio. The couple who run this restaurant are convinced. It’s a cheap, delicious, easy to prepare, and really tasty fish. Everyone should try it. It’s scary, yes, but if you eat it, you’re doing a good deed. It’s better to eat millions of lion fish than the last tuna in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is one of the fastest warming areas in the world, and the lion fish is not expected to stop in Greece. As temperatures increase, the predator will likely move west to waters of Italy and France.

As human-induced climate change intensifies, waters are warming and the sea life within is beginning to change its behaviour. For the past couple of years, the Mediterranean sea has been attracting a litany of invasive fish prone to more tropical climates. In Greece, the lionfish has become a headache for the local fishing industry…Researchers say it can eat up to six times its weight and reduce the number of native fish in its vicinity by 80% in just over a month. But a solution exists. Story by France 2 and Eliza Herbert.
#Greece #lionfish #climatechange

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