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Care for a plate of slimehead? How about some orange roughy?
It's the same fish, but one sounds much more palatable than the other. The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service gave the slimehead a rebranding in the late 1970s in an effort to make the underused fish more marketable.
Now, Illinois officials and their partners want to give the invasive Asian carp threatening the Great Lakes a similar makeover. The goal: To grow the fish's image as a healthy, delicious, organic, sustainable food source — which will, in turn, get more fishermen removing more tons of the fish from Illinois rivers just outside of Lake Michigan. |
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Markets such as pet food, bait and fertilizer have expanded the use of invasive Asian carp in recent years. But "it's been hard to get the human consumption part of this because of the four-letter word: carp," said Kevin Irons, assistant chief of fisheries for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
A full-on media blitz is coming later this year to change that. The proposed new name for the fish is being kept tightly under wraps for a big rollout in June, prior to the Boston Seafood Show in mid-July. But other aspects of the "The Perfect Catch" campaign will point out that the invasive Asian carp species — silver, bighead, grass and black carp — are flaky, tasty, organic, sustainable, low in mercury and rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids. |
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