Can We Eat Our Way Out Of An Ecological Disaster?

A green crab caught on the Harraseeket River, June 19, 2026, in Freeport, Maine. —Robert F.

Bukaty—AP Photo When Rachel Bowman first tried to bring lionfish to restaurants and grocery stores in the Florida Keys in 2012, it was a hard sell.

“We weren’t getting that much money for them, and it took a little convincing,” says the commercial lionfish hunter.

That’s because the invasive lionfish—flamboyant enough that Bowman likens it to a Mardi Gras drag queen—wasn’t traditionally on the menu.

Native to the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific, lionfish have infiltrated the western Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, where they have become a destructive invasive species ever since the first was recorded near Miami in 1985, likely after being released from the home aquarium trade.

With few predators in these new habitats, a single fish can produce more than 2 million eggs a year .

Studies have found that just one lionfish can reduce the replenishment of native fish populations on some reefs by nearly 80% .

In 2016, Bowman sold the first lionfish to Whole Foods in South Florida.

“That was the ground-breaker,” she says, “because if Whole Foods is promoting something, then people know it’s good.

We went from $2 per lb. to $10 per lb. pretty much overnight.” Now, 10 years later, through Keys Fisheries, her fish is sold in stores, and lionfish appears on restaurant menus throughout the area—and in doing so, millions of native reef fish have been saved from predation.

Bowman’s work is part of a growing trend that’s not just about introducing new dishes to the local food scene; creating a market for invasive species may also bring ecological benefits for the local environment.

Invasive species are considered one of the five most critical direct drivers of biodiversity loss, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), whose most recent report in 2023 notes that the global economic toll of dealing with these species cost more than $423 billion in 2019.

Once established, invasive species are often impossible to eradicate because they reproduce rapidly, spread across vast, interconnected environments, and often go unchecked until they are established.

And the challenge of managing invasive species is particularly acute in the ocean, says Helen Roy, a professor at the U.K.