![]() ![]() These teeth form a strong, heavy beak capable of cracking through hard prey such as mollusks and crustaceans, as well as sipunculids, tunicates, seagrass and detritus. Puffers have four tooth plates arranged in quadrants, with two teeth on the bottom and two on the top (Carpenter 2002). ![]() The checkered puffer, Sphoeroides testudineus, is one of several fish species belonging to the family Tetradontidae, meaning “four teeth”. Location and Distribution: Caribbean, The Bahamas, Florida, and Gulf of Mexico."I'm afraid not — it's still a potential health risk," answered Lee Schlesinger, head of the marine issues with the FWC in Tallahassee.Īnd he said it with regret, like a true fan that misses the "tasty toadies" as much as I do.The checkered puffer ( Sphoeroides testudineus) is a species in the family Tetraodontidae, or pufferfishes. Still, I hoped that the ban imposed in 2004 was near being lifted when I phoned the FWC in the spring. It is only produced after the fish ingests certain dinoflagellates (small organisms) in the water. The good news for anglers is that saxitoxin cannot be contracted by contact with the fish. ![]() ![]() According to the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, saxitoxin is 160,000 times more powerful than cocaine. What is not funny at all is that in severe cases saxitoxin can lead to possible respiratory paralysis and/or death within 24 hours. These are also, as it were, symptoms of spending too much time at the Pineapple Festival. The early symptoms that arrive within 30 minutes to three hours of the meal include: Paresthesia (abnormal tingling or burning of the skin or extremities) Numbness/burning around mouth and fingertips Ataxia (loss of muscular coordination) Giddiness/staggering Drowsiness Dry throat and skin Aphasia (loss of speech or speech comprehension) Incoherence Rash Fever and/or Nausea/vomiting/diarrhea. The illness associated with puffer fish is known as a saxitoxin. It's never a tummy ache — it's always something of the magnitude of a septic wound or a nervous disorder that impacts one's brain. I wouldn't wish a seafood illness on my worst enemy. It was because more than a dozen people became ill after eating puffer fish harvested near Titusville. You can still catch 'em, but you can't keep 'em. prohibits all harvest of puffer fish from Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Since then, my poor brother has been "jonesing" for fried tasty toadies and tartar sauce. That was when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission moved to protect us from ourselves. I can tell you this — a puffer fish caught within earshot of my brother, Jason, did not get turned loose to puff again.īut that all changed on July 15, 2004. I thought they were easy to clean, one just had to turn them inside out. Most people I know never kept them, or tried one and decided it was too hard to clean, didn't taste great or wasn't worth the effort. They range from as long as my finger to as long as my hand (except the rare rabbitfish, a larger puffer cousin that gets to be as big as a football). The southern puffer is the predominant blowfish on the Treasure Coast. There are more than 100 puffer fish species worldwide, but only nine in Florida. My family always called them "tasty toadies" or "chicken of the sea." Most folks call them blowfish and back in the day, they would occasionally show up on menus or at market as "sea squab." Kids cannot resist tickling its white bumpy belly to see it puff up before tossing it back into the saltwater. When under stress, it can swell up two to three times its size. Of course, the novelty of the fish is its defense mechanism. As long as it didn't have whiskers, or a tail that stung, it went home with us in a 5-gallon pickle bucket. We used small hooks and small pieces of shrimp and caught all kinds of stuff. It seemed like we caught plenty of catfish and snappers and trout as kids, but puffers were right up there. Growing up along the lagoon, I think puffer fish was among our most common catches. Sometimes it's a juvenile one of dozens of possible inshore and offshore species that use the wide, shallow lagoon as a nursery ground.īut anymore, there's a better chance that the bite that is never hooked is delivered by a wily puffer fish. Often the culprit is a pinfish (we grew up calling them a Sailor's choice). To me it has always been a good sign that indicated marine life was alive and well in the grass flats of the nation's most important and diverse estuary. The familiar nip of a little critter is an integral part of a fishing trip on the flats of the Indian River Lagoon. Without looking, I knew the tail-end of my shrimp was a goner.Ī few cranks of the reel, and sure enough, there on the hook was the head of a shrimp, the midsection of a shrimp, but not the tail of a shrimp. ![]()
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