The Best American Travel Writing 2019

by Jason Wilson

  Hence all the tastings. And “venomous, not poisonous.”

  “Right, and again, we enjoy diving, we enjoy our reefs. The first time I pulled up a lionfish, and it had a shovelhead lobster baby in its stomach, it was like, all right, game on. I want to go down, and I want to spearfish for my allotment of snapper or grouper, or I want to pick up spiny lobster—those little bastards are eating what I am, eating my stuff! Well, someone needs to do something to fix that and it might as well be us.”

  One of the ways to break through with the public would be to get a big national retailer on board. Guess who’s here this weekend with their own tent? Whole Foods Market.

  Dave Ventura is the grocery chain’s Florida regional seafood coordinator. The stores have been rolling lionfish out on a test basis for the last two years or so. The response has been overwhelmingly positive.

  “Our customers here in Florida are very well educated about our ecosystem, our environment, are passionate about protecting them. They’re very happy to hear that the Whole Foods in Florida has taken the lead on trying to be part of the solution to remove the lionfish from the water.

  “What I can say is we’ve been selling lionfish for fifteen months and I’m happy to report we’ve sold over thirty thousand pounds.

  “You know, everybody seems to realize that the good news is we scratched the surface. We developed a market, we know there’s a market. Now it’s like, hey, how do we get it on scale? How do we remove the lionfish in large volume? Once we accomplish that, then I think I can say confidently that we are making a dent, making a difference. Right now, I think we’ve been very successful in creating a public awareness.”

  And Whole Foods is developing its own product lines, too, like smoked lionfish. There are a million ways to prepare it. In fact, do an image search for “whole fried lionfish.” It’s a centerpiece showstopper at several local restaurants, with the fins fanned golden brown in all directions. At the end of the meal, they hand out the spines as toothpicks.

  So we’re going to fight the rapaciousness of one species with the bottomless appetites of another. Ours. Lionfish in this hemisphere have only one enemy. Us.

  But it’s going to take some doing.

  Because “venomous, not poisonous” sounds like something Truman Capote might have said about Gore Vidal on The Dick Cavett Show.

  In Which I Speak to the Mermaid

  Saturday night, and there’s a lionfish tasting.

  This is upstairs at the Bodacious Olive, a restaurant and event space on a charming old-town stretch of brick storefronts not far from the park and the tournament tents, across from a Pilates studio.

  The wind howls and low clouds worry the rooftops, but inside the Edison bulbs glow and the wineglasses sparkle and the test kitchen is as snug and clean as a catalog layout. There are 40 or so of us here, sponsors and spear hunters and dive masters, wives and husbands and scientists, captains and mates and mermaids. Celebrity Flora-Bama “chef-advocate” Jon Gibson is making lionfish tacos and lionfish sashimi and talking about sustainability and lionfish deliciousness.

  There’s Captain Andy, and there’s Allie and Brian and John and Steve. Barry isn’t here. He’s across town at Pensacola State for a screening of the documentary Reef Assassin, produced by Mark Kwapis and edited by Maribeth Abrams. It’s all about the lionfish invasion, but thanks to a scheduling wormhole these two events are happening at the same time. Some of the people at the movie should be here. Some of the people in the movie are standing right in front of me. Confused, I talk to the mermaid. Her name is Moira Dobbs. She is from Plano, Texas—where she runs a mermaid school.

  I’m in italics, and a business suit.

  Do you find that the kids retain the things you tell them about lionfish?

  “Absolutely. And what’s so great is Coast Watch Alliance not only does amazing things for the lionfish invasion issue, but they also are big into marine debris awareness and cleanup. When I do these in-character performances, if they’re a birthday party, if they’re an event, I bring balloons, straws, fishing line, different things that I pick up at the bottom of the ocean as a diver, and I say, ‘Hey, it was so nice to meet you, when I go home, look at all these things that are all over my house,’ and I watch it wash over these kids. And it’s creating little eco-warriors.”

  She looks just about exactly how you’d picture a mermaid. Pale. Pretty. Lots of auburn hair. In fact, think of Ariel easing out of her 20s, on her way to a job interview, and you’ll have it. But out there under the tent, on her chaise, sun bright and the bay sparkling, wearing the tail and her magnificent fin, talking to children, the illusion is complete.

  So how long have you been doing this?

  “Professionally, a couple years now. I host a full-time year-round professional mermaid school, that’s actually in landlocked DFW, Texas.”

  Do you get a lot of good turnout, in Dallas–Fort Worth?

  “We do, and many walks of life, for mermaid school, and that also allows me to establish a great performance troupe that does the same kind of in-character performances that I do. Birthday parties, ocean education, library readings, stuff like that.”

  Are you a lionfish hunter on your own time?

  “I am, I am. Yes.”

  So you know all these guys?

  “Yes. As a mermaid and a diver.”

  I was going to say, do a lot of the dads hit on the mermaid, when they bring the kids over?

  “We get the ‘Hey, speaking mythologically, I don’t know if mermaids wear tops!’ We call those ‘merverts.’ But yes, I’m all about the banter.”

  So the tail . . .

  “That thing I was wearing today is a free-diving monofin embedded inside forty pounds of platinum Dragon Skin silicone. Yeah. So you can free dive in the ocean in that thing.”

  Hot, though, on land.

  “Yes. It is hot. It’s neutrally buoyant, and really wonderful to swim in the ocean, or pool. But it’s a little rough after a few hours. I do dry out. Every two to three hours, I take a thirty-minute break. You need to. Your feet are inside of that really heavy fluke. The fluke is the bottom of the tail that you see. It’s kind of like being en pointe, in ballet.”

  So if you could tell America one last thing, as the mermaid spokesperson—

  “Yes . . .”

  —on behalf of the lionfish invasion awareness—

  “Yes . . .”

  —what would you say?

  “Seek, find, and destroy, man.”

  Truth is, lionfish tastes pretty great. The raw flesh of the fish is opalescent, fine-grained and smooth and nearly translucent, with a flavor to match. On the tongue, uncooked, it melts fast and tastes faintly of the sea—a memory of salt rather than salt itself. Baked, broiled, fried, poached, grilled, seared, or blackened, the meat of the fish is firm and white and buttery. It takes and holds whatever flavors you throw at it, whether you’re making ceviche or fish and chips. It stands up to Cajun rub and to citrus and to wasabi and to remoulade and cilantro and garlic and ginger and cumin and aioli. It won’t back down from red peppers or green chiles. It is as fearless as the person cooking it.

  Everyone lines up for samples. Lip-smacking ensues.

  “Don’t be afraid of it,” Jon Gibson says low and sweet to us all. “This is a versatile fish.” He’s slicing fillets so thin you could read a newspaper through them if anyone still read newspapers. “Just remember, everybody, the fish is venomous, not poisonous.”

  And out we all go into that windy evening.

  Sunday

  Most of the tents were blown down overnight, so the park looks forlorn as folks work to reset for the big day. There’s Captain Andy picking up chairs and tables while Adele rolls in the deep on the PA. The early crowd is sparse, but by midmorning, even under threat of rain, the little plaza is filled again, and the music rises with the smoke from the grills and the waves pound the seawall and the crowd waiting for lionfish-stuffed jalapeño poppers is as long as the line for the crawfis
h boil.

  You hear fragments on the wind, from the chefs and the experts and the kids and their parents . . .

  “they reproduce every three or four days”

  “these are fantastic”

  “it’s really good”

  “aren’t they poisonous?”

  “venomous”

  “go tell your restaurants you want lionfish”

  “there’s not much I won’t eat”

  Early in the afternoon, it’s time for the count and the presentations to the winners. Captain Andy handles the microphone and the afternoon is an inventory of his gratitude and his enthusiasm. He and the crowd are stoked.

  Biggest fish speared was a little over 17 inches.

  Our boat, “Team Niuhi,” finishes third, with 539 lionfish. “Full Stringer,” a crew from up the road, is second, with 859 fish. “Team Hang On”—the all-women’s team—wins going away, with 926 lionfish. The crowd roars and many tears are shed. Allie won’t stop hugging people. For several hours.

  There’s a presentation of plaques and prize money and prizes, many of them quite nice, from dive gear to drones to nights out on the town, but it’s pretty clearly pride everyone competes for.

  Rachel Bowman is first among equals on the women’s team. She is a commercial spearfisher down in the Keys and appears to be the lean, inked, freckled, and clear-eyed apex predator for the entire state of Florida.

  She shoots and sells lionfish every day.

  “I’ve got about a forty-mile range that I work, from Alligator Reef to American Shoals, and I have my spots. I have secret spots. I have public spots. The commercial fishermen in the Keys have been amazing as far as sharing their numbers with me, especially the commercial lobster guys. They know where there’s big piles of rubble that other people don’t know about because their traps get smacked on them. They really appreciate what I’m doing, and they help me out as much as possible. I like to think that the Whole Foods thing has made them more money because now the lionfish in their traps, they’re not worth two dollars a pound anymore. Now they’re worth six dollars.”

  You’re fighting them to a draw down there.

  “Yeah, I’ve got commercial trap guys that tell me that last year, the lionfish numbers kind of stopped going up, and this year they’ve actually gone down a little bit.

  “I know Dr. Stephanie Green with Oregon State University has been doing some research with the organization REEF. They found, on isolated coral heads in the Bahamas, that not only is there a decline in the lionfish population, but there’s actually a resurgence of the native fish populations. What we’re doing—we’re never going to get rid of them—but I have to believe we’re making a difference. She and I measured fish today and the whole table was covered in egg sacs. Those are egg sacs that are never going to have a chance to do any kind of damage.”

  What do you think of Doc Gittings’s traps?

  “Well, I’ve got a brother-in-law who’s a commercial lobster trapper, and this year in three months, he pulled up six thousand pounds of lionfish in his lobster traps. That’s in sandy bottom, two hundred to three hundred, where divers can’t go. So, maybe if he was allowed to deploy those traps when lobster season is closed, then that’s another possibility.”

  Rachel Bowman has a diver-down flag enameled on her big toenail. She is the real reef assassin.

  Grayson Shepard is the Panhandle charter captain who masterminded the women’s team. Like Captain Andy, it is impossible to judge his age. He is sun-red and fit and rawboned and could be 35 or 235. He is now the Red Auerbach of lionfish, and we sat for a while to talk in the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission motor home.

  “I put together this little dream team that are just hard-core and fun as hell to hang out with. And they are dedicated and they are killers of the deep. They went with me in four-foot seas the past two days where a lot of men would not have gone. Several of my fellow charter captains canceled trips and they were freaking out. I’m like, I’m going. The girls are like ‘Go go go!’ My buddies were on the radio like, ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Are you all right?’ I’m like, man we’re fine. We’re kicking ass out here.”

  I explained to Captain Shepard about the throwing up.

  “Well they didn’t throw up. The girls suited up and went down. Over and over and over again.”

  Captain Shepard is himself a little bit of a sentimental badass.

  “This crazy little lionfish has brought together so many incredibly cool people. We all have the same screw loose in our head. That same screw makes you an interesting, easygoing kind of person. It’s a little community. We all have this common obsession with lionfish. You could put all of us in a van and drive us across the country. We would get along like peas and carrots. We’re best friends. When you meet us, we’re all like of the same tribe. It gives us the chills.”

  Even with most teams canceling their Saturday fishing, the tournament still brought in nearly 4,000 lionfish. Turns out the only thing more rapacious on earth than a lionfish is you and me.

  So I ask folks as they leave, “You think eating them might be able to help stop the invasion?”

  And they’ll say, “It’s fantastic, I hope it helps.”

  or

  “Fingers crossed!”

  or

  “It ain’t gonna hurt. It’s gonna help a little bit, I guess, but I don’t know. That’s a big Gulf out there. That’s all they can do to try and stop it? I don’t see how that’s going to stop it.”

  For the last hour or two of the afternoon, everyone puts their feet up. After three days of work and worry and nausea, 6-foot surf and 100-foot bounces, there’s finally time to sit around the tents and the trailers and drink spiced rum and tell some lies. This everyone does with great relief.

  Music plays and the wind eases and the bay is a luminous green.

  Andy says, “I think it went great. We had some tough obstacles and I was a little bit nervous that maybe we wouldn’t have the best turnout and you know, under the circumstances, with the tough weather and all, I think we did a fantastic job and everybody really came together and they went out and worked real hard at getting their fish. They came in and they were all very supportive and they all had an awesome time and I think everything went very smoothly. I think it came out fantastic. I’ve been on the water long enough to know that you cannot predict the weather and even when you do, you’re wrong.”

  Allie is still hugging people.

  “Let’s go eat,” Andy says.

  The Big Finish

  So, quiet and tired, everyone caravans to the Sake Café, a sushi place a couple of neighborhoods over, eating what they speared, now set out on two long tables full of hand rolls and sashimi, chopsticks and wasabi and cold beer. The kitchen bustles, but the place isn’t crowded. It’s early yet, even for Sunday dinner in Pensacola. At the head of the longest table Andy’s wearing that enigmatic smile, that sidewise Andy smile, but Barry is the one who stands to speak.

  He thanks everyone for their hard work and for their excellent spearfishing skills and for fighting this good fight. He thanks the event sponsors for their contributions and the restaurant for making dinner. He talks about what all this means to the environment and to Florida and to him. When he talks about the camaraderie of the divers and the friendship and yes, the love, he surprises himself by choking up. He gathers himself and goes on just a little longer.

  “You gotta eat ’em to beat ’em,” he says at the end.

  And everyone applauds.

  Dolly back, roll credits, that’s the last scene in your Hollywood movie.

  But if you’re writing a magazine story, maybe you don’t end it there. Not like that. Not with sushi and a speech. Too upbeat. Too certain.

  Nor can your story end with that unremarkable wind steady off the bay, not with the striking of the tents and boxing of the leftover brochures, not with the loading of the vans or the vendors rolling up their banners or emptying their grills, and not with the straggl
ers wandering back to the parking lot under a Sunday sky as flat and gray as gunmetal.

  What you want is something to remember them all, a way to think of Florida and that crazy light and that water and those men and those women and those fish.

  So maybe you’ll look back, no matter where you go or what you do, and see them all forever at the dock that Friday night, the whole wrung-out, laughing, groaning boatload, Andy and Allie and Barry and John and Carl and Alex and those scientists gathered around those big boxes of fish, those big coolers filled with ice and fins and Japanese fans, the sun faltering in the west, tangled in the trees, shadows long on the ground and the sky a low flame up there in the spreaders and the shrouds. One of the marine biologists leans down into the cooler and gingerly plucks up another lionfish. “I’ve got you now,” she says to herself and for a second you don’t know if she means one fish or the whole species and anyway you can barely hear her because Andy’s got the stereo cranked on the boat and Van Halen is playing “Hot for Teacher.” It’s all a trick of the light, sure, too sentimental and too droll, but it’s also true and that’s the beauty of it.

  It’s a long fight. And maybe the lionfish win.

  Maybe that’s your ending.

  LAUREN MARKHAM

  If These Walls Could Talk

  from Harper’s Magazine

  According to one Norse myth, the gods needed a wall. Asgard, their kingdom, had once been surrounded by barricades, but a war had destroyed them. When the gods decided to erect a new wall, a builder appeared out of nowhere and offered his services. Loki, the trickster, suggested that the gods accept his proposal but set an impossible deadline. When time ran out, they could send him on his way, thereby getting the lion’s share of the wall for free.