We were recently features in the Knoxville Daily Sun and here is an excerpt from that article:
At Marathon in the Florida Keys, restaurateur and avid diver John Mirabella enjoys spearing lionfish for his own establishment, Castaway Waterfront Restaurant and Sushi Bar. He and some of his friends dive regularly for almost all of the restaurant’s seafood, and he has great fun with lionfish.
“Practically all of it is used for sushi in a special roll called the ‘King of the Jungle.’ It looks like a regular sushi roll, but I save the head and tail of the lionfish, deep-fry them and put them at either end of the roll. I like to say that you ‘get to meet your meal at the Castaway,’” Mirabella said.
Mirabella said he first observed lionfish in about 2008 and that the population quickly exploded. Lionfish live from the shoreline to about 1,000 feet deep and are most prolific at 200 to 400 feet down. Most weigh less than two pounds, and a three-pounder is a big fish, he noted.
That’s fairly small for an ocean fish, so some people wonder how lionfish are so detrimental.