Goliath grouper making a comeback in Florida, so let’s kill ‘em
Florida’s waters are as full of odd creatures as our streets are. We’ve got walking catfish, which are both invasive and disturbing to watch; the pig-snouted (but delicious) hogfish; and some weird-looking sea cucumbers that are valuable because some folks believe them to be an aphrodisiac.
But if size matters to you, then let’s talk about the aptly named goliath grouper. Mature ones can reach eight feet long and weigh so much you wouldn’t want one to fall on you. It would be like being clobbered with a falling piano. (And as REO Speedwagon taught us, you can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish.)
Back when my kids were little, I often took them to the Florida Aquarium, where they would play in the outdoor splash zone until their fingers got all pruny. Then I’d get them dried off and we’d roam around marveling at the sharks and seahorses. When we got to the tank with the goliath groupers, though, we would always stop, awestruck. They were so huge we felt as if we’d been hit with a shrink ray.
“They’re curious and somewhat friendly,” Luiz Barbieri, who leads the marine fisheries research program at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, told me this week.
