Try this Triggerfish…It’s Abundant and It’s Good!

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In South and North Carolina, Georgia and Eastern Florida, January brought new restrictions to what fishermen can catch and sell out of the local waters. That’s because some popular species like grouper, red snapper, black sea bass and red porgy are becoming too rare–and need time to increase their numbers.

A story by Christine Muhlke in today’s NY Times magazine profiled a fisherman named Mark Marhefka, who is now delivering abundant species like triggerfish and other ‘trash fish’ to seafood restaurants who once turned up their noses at the stuff.

“If I don’t make Abundant Seafood work, I won’t be able to survive being a commercial fisherman anymore,” he said. There is something satisfying to me about people using the many types of fish in the sea who aren’t endangered, by simply showing people how to cook them. The story included a recipe for triggerfish, it seems that the biggest effort is convincing people that they can enjoy an unknown species instead of their regular snapper and grouper.

These fish are often caught a mile from a restaurant but then trucked to a warehouse across the state before its delivered a few miles from where it first docked. Marhefka sells his line-caught fish after he gets the orders while he’s on the boat…and only has to deliver it a few miles from where he docks.