Rio Grande Cichlid, Bayou St. John, MidCity New Orleans
I enjoyed D.T. Max’s recent New Yorker article on lionfish and the spearfishing communities in Florida that target these creatures. Max’s story reminded me of another aquarium fish, a species that allegedly escaped after a hurricane and which now populates the brackish waters around New Orleans: the Rio Grande Cichlid. Rio Grande Cichlid are known to outcompete other fish for feeding and breeding territory, and they have fierce-looking little front teeth to prove it. Unlike lionfish, though, Rio Grande Cichlid can be caught on a hook; I catch them regularly in Bayou St. John in MidCity when I fly-fish there. Anglers are encouraged to “destroy” these fish upon catching them. But no matter how many anglers kill these fish, they adapt and proliferate. Max’s underlying statistics quietly reveal a predicament: Millions of lionfish, spreading and reproducing exponentially, often in waters practically unreachable by humans. Even with the best spearfishers and netting contraptions, we alone won’t be able to reverse this invasion. And stories of invasive fish often end up being parables for the Anthropocene: The more humans attempt to control nature, for better or worse, the more our own invasive nature is revealed.
