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Paper short abstract

What happens when an invasive fish lands on local tables? In Latvia’s coastal communities, the round goby is abundant yet contested. Fishers see opportunity, households resist, calling it “not ours.” This paper explores how food heritage and gastropolitics shape identity in the face of change.

Paper long abstract

In recent decades, invasive species have become a global ecological and policy challenge, reshaping ecosystems and food systems alike. The Baltic Sea, one of the world’s largest and most vulnerable brackish water ecosystems, has seen a rapid influx of non-indigenous species. Among them, the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus)—introduced from the Ponto–Caspian region—has established itself as a dominant coastal fish. Ecologically abundant and physiologically adaptable, it has become a central player in Baltic trophic networks. Yet in Latvia, despite its availability, its role as food remains marginal.

Tables are never neutral surfaces: they gather people, tastes, and values, defining who belongs and who does not. This paper explores how the round goby is negotiated at the tables of Latvian coastal communities, showing how ecological change intersects with cultural meaning and food heritage.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Latvia, the paper examines how fishers view the goby as a resource with economic potential—filling seasonal gaps in catches, integrating into smoking and export practices, and representing pragmatic adaptation to ecological change. By contrast, coastal households often reject the goby, with food choices shaped by habitus, inherited tastes, and culinary traditions. Here, the goby is seen as too bony, too sweet, or simply foreign—acceptable only when incorporated into familiar recipes or displaced onto “others”.

The analysis highlights diverging adaptation tempos: communities demonstrate flexibility and openness, while households remain conservative. In this sense, the goby becomes a medium through which ecological change, identity, and tradition are negotiated in coastal Latvia.