A banded lionfish hovers above a coral shelf, its red-and-white fins splayed like an underwater showpiece. Behind my scuba mask I can’t help staring. This gaudy invader is exactly what we came for.
Off Destin, Florida, lionfish are prolific. With no natural predators here and 18 venomous spines that discourage most native animals, these fish behave like rulers of their patch of reef. But on a May weekend during the Emerald Coast Open—an annual spearfishing tournament that doubles as a food festival—the invaders meet their match in hundreds of divers and dozens of local chefs.
I’m at the festival as a food judge and, briefly, as a diver. My instructor, divemaster Dana Christy, hands me a sling spear: a slim pole with clustered barbs at one end and a thick rubber band on the other. The idea is simple enough—pull the band, aim, and release to impale the fish—but actually hitting a palm-sized lionfish while floating in an 80-foot current is anything but. My breath hisses faster, my hands wobble, and the spear sails past the target. Christy, with practiced calm, takes the spear and nails the fish; she drops it into a padded containment tube designed for lionfish. I feel equal parts embarrassed and impressed.
By the tournament’s end the numbers are staggering: 128 registered divers helped haul in 15,018 lionfish during the two-day main event, and the total for the whole festival reached 20,752. Prizes, donated cash and gear—up to $10,000 for the winning team—reward the biggest hauls. The top team took home an astonishing 2,641 lionfish over the weekend.
For many participants, this is more than competition. It’s hands-on conservation. Lionfish, native to the Indo-Pacific, likely arrived in Florida waters in the 1980s after aquarium releases and spread quickly—spawning prolifically (females can release about 27,000 eggs every few days) and expanding through the Caribbean, up the Atlantic coast and into Gulf waters around 2010. They prey on more than 30 species important to local fisheries—red snapper, triggerfish, and grouper among them—and can consume dozens of small fish in an hour. Studies have documented dramatic local declines in native juvenile fishes after lionfish invasion: one experiment in the Bahamas found juvenile survival dropped by nearly 80% over five weeks; other research found substantial declines in the abundance of certain native species.
Alex Fogg, who now oversees natural resources for Destin-Fort Walton Beach tourism, watched the invasion unfold as a graduate student and spent years studying lionfish biology and behavior. He realized eradication wasn’t realistic but also saw an opportunity: turn the problem into a draw. The first Destin lionfish tournament launched in 2019; it has grown into what he calls the world’s largest and has resulted in the removal of more than 125,000 lionfish overall. The event mixes education, music, cooking demos, kids’ activities, and booths selling lionfish-themed art—part conservation effort, part festival.
A central part of that effort is convincing people that lionfish are safe and delicious to eat. The venom is confined to the spines, so once those are removed the flesh poses no danger. At AJ’s Seafood and Oyster Bar I taste a whole fried lionfish: the fins crackle like chips and the white flesh is mild and clean—less briny than many reef fish and with a firm, meaty texture not unlike monkfish. Harbor Docks’ “reef raider” roll layers raw and lightly torch-seared lionfish with wasabi tobiko and eel sauce; the fish’s smokiness cuts through the richness. At The Deck at Destin Brewery a themed three-course “invasive experience” offers citrus-cured lionfish bruschetta, a bronzed lionfish scampi atop housemade noodles, and a panna cotta decorated with a chocolate lionfish, all washed down with a festival lionfish lager.
Tex-Mex spot La Paz has won the chef competition multiple times with a sizzling Acapulco lionfish fajita crowned by a family mango salsa. The restaurant pairs its dishes with education: staff hand out information about the species, they stage playful performances (one employee roamed the dining room in a wetsuit carrying a plush speared fish), and the whole presentation is meant to demystify lionfish while driving demand.
That demand is crucial if the “eat them to beat them” strategy is to work long term. Lionfish rarely take bait, so spearfishing is the most effective commercial harvest technique—an activity mostly practiced by recreational divers in Destin. Some local markets have started buying lionfish; a few restaurants are buying local catches directly. Owners and organizers hope that building steady consumer demand will encourage more fishermen and suppliers to enter the market, creating a sustainable commercial pathway to remove more fish.
There’s evidence derbies help: researchers monitoring reef areas before and after lionfish derbies found significant short-term reductions in lionfish numbers—around 52% in one study—and in some cases a rebound of native fishes. Organizers stress the effect is local and temporary, but meaningful for protecting reefs and juvenile fish populations for months at a time.
On tournament day, boats pull up to a dockside tent and divers unload coolers of banded bodies onto long white tables. Volunteers with gloves weigh and measure each catch while recording details. Some fish are small juveniles, others are impressively large—the prize for the biggest this year went to a specimen over 18 inches long. Teams often donate smaller fish to chefs and sell the larger specimens to local buyers for roughly $6 a pound, usually enough to cover fuel for the two-day effort.
For the participants, motives mix: some are motivated by conservation, some by the competition and prizes, and many by pure fun. “They’re an invasive species, they eat everything, so it’s good to get rid of them,” one diver told me as his crew dumped coolers of fish on the table. “Plus, it’s great fun.”
Back on shore, tasting the variety of lionfish dishes makes one thing clear: these flashy predators are edible and adaptable in the kitchen. Between anglers, chefs, scientists and volunteers, the Destin tournament is an inventive local response to a global problem—one that pairs spears with spatulas, turning a damaging invader into both an educational tool and a seasonal delicacy. It won’t erase lionfish from the map, but for now it helps keep their numbers in check and gives coastal communities a way to fight back one tasty bite at a time.
