Snakehead Terroir [sic--as in "the flavor of the land"]

PeopleSystems and Sustainability: This Week in the Global Environment

Snakehead Terroir  [sic Terroir, as in the French sense “taste of the land”]

Years ago, I visited rural eastern China in the autumn. The fish courses at many banquets were delicious aquacultured Tilapia and crab. When I was there next, in the spring, the seafood was invariably delicious preparations of snakeheads with mushrooms and ham. On inquiry, I learned that we ate snakeheads in the spring because that’s when they were fished out of the aquaculture ponds so the Tilapia would survive the summer! 

Now, of course, in North America at least, the name “snakehead” horrifies environmentalists, and conjures visions of equivalent exotic invasives like rabbits in Australia, zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, brown tree snakes on Guam, and European starlings around the world. 

I think the potential for non-native species to cause ecological havoc is vastly overrated. Consider that when European botanists followed the first colonists to the Americas, much of the flora was “invasive” from the Old World, and this was only decades after Europeans first reached the New World! By far the majority of these plants (and many animals) were generally benign in their new habitat. 

Presently, we are looking hard scientifically to ascertain and quantify negative impacts of non-natives such as the common reed (so spectacular in the tidal meadows near New York City) and the Burmese python in South Florida. These species and others may certainly have some ecological effects, but the fact that it requires hard science for us to determine them implies that they are not the destructive nightmares we feared.

In the case of snakeheads, it is interesting to note that they have been favored aquarium species for decades. Gunther Sterba, in his monumental 1962 Freshwater Fishes of the World (The Pet Library, Ltd), describing domesticated aquarium species for hobbyists in the temperate world, included several species of snakehead among the popular fishes. 

In addition, we’ve become more innovative in our management of and relationships with some exotic species. The Washington Post of 30 April included a feature story under the byline of Patterson Clark reporting on monitoring and study of snakeheads in the Potomac River system. Clark reports that snakeheads are not having the damaging impacts in the system that many had feared when they were first noticed decades ago. It also devolves that snakeheads are much more common and abundant than once thought. They grow big—to a meter long and 20 kilograms in weight—and have become a favored sport fish. The Potomac thus adds a species to its recreational popularity, along with the largemouth bass, which is also not native to these waters.

The lesson here is self-evident. With few exceptions, species of animals and plants, native or not, are not one-dimensional. They have many attributes, and it is best not to tag them as simplistic “good” or “bad” ecosystem components. They should be understood objectively and managed in ways that reflect their multifaceted status in the environment. For me, a platter of steamed snakehead with mushrooms and ham puts a real polish on a formerly reviled “invasive” species.