Florida based Whole Foods started selling the highly venomous lionfish today in hopes of removing the nonnative species of fish from marine ecosystems in the state. The fish normally has 18 poisonous spines but they will be removed from the fish when sold at Whole Foods and will cost $8.99 per pound until prices increase by a dollar on June 1.
No one can say exactly how the lion fish got over here, but it’s speculated that people have been dumping the unwanted fish from home aquariums into the Atlantic Ocean for the past 25 years or so.
What makes the Indo-Pacific based lionfish such a threat Atlantic waters is its lack of natural predators. They tend to feed on small crustaceans and fish, two notable ones being the young of snapper and grouper, two important commercial fish species.
