Flushing Frankenfish

Kerry Howley | August 9, 2005

Via Gothamist: The snakehead, everyone's favorite invasive species, rears its carnivorous head in Queens.

Jesse Walker samples a tasty snakehead here, I report on tongue-in-cheek attempts to get the snakehead on the endangered list here, and Ron Bailey sticks up for maligned non-native species everywhere here.

Comments

Jeff|8.9.05 @ 6:34PM|#

Amazing how a fish that was a staple of exotic fish stores in the 1980s can now be seen as threatened.

|8.10.05 @ 7:38AM|#

Snakeheads, snakeheads, roly poly snakeheads; snakeheads, snakeheads, eat *YOU* up � yum

drf|8.10.05 @ 9:27AM|#

Jesse Walker: food critic extraordinaire.

if you're in chicago, then, check out this restaurant:
allen's cafe (allenscafe.com)

it's a goodie. nearly as good as North Pond Cafe but with better atmosphere.

highly recommendable.

|8.10.05 @ 10:47AM|#

This is a good article, but I think Bailey does not give enough explanation for the precautionary principle. There may be a fundamental difference between continental and island species with regard to adaptibility, but at this point we do not know that. It is the enormous complexity of ecology that points toward precaution -- we simply do not know what the affects of the introduction of non-native species will be.
Could we get some numbers on rate of species extinctions on continents over time? Has there been an increase that corelates with human travel?

The Lonewacko Blog|8.10.05 @ 10:28PM|#

On the larger issue, would it be possible for people to post a bond if they advocate dangerous positions? For instance, those who support invasive species could pledge to pay for the damage caused by those species, should it later be determined that the invasive species caused more damage than good.

What do you guys think? Hey, where'd they go? Anyone see what happened to those libertarians that were standing here a moment ago?

|8.11.05 @ 10:02AM|#

Lonewacko-

Well, I've never taken a stance on snakehead fish, but on the more general issue, what about people who support a heavily regulated labor market? Should they post a bond in case their stance hinders economic growth and inflates the cost of living?