Paper short abstract:

To cultivate a taste for aliens is challenging for humans and fishes. To disentangle the meanings and politics assigned to more-than-human eating, this talk thinks through multispecies invasivorism (eating invasive species) as a solution for controlling alien marine species in the waters of Crete.

Paper long abstract:

This talk thinks through multispecies invasivorism (eating invasive species) and the politics of eating in the context of alien marine species in the waters of Crete. In the last five years, alien lionfish, pufferfish, rabbitfish and sea urchins have proliferated in southern Crete. They are part of the 600 Lessepsian species, i.e. alien marine species entering the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal, which are now transforming local marine ecologies. Why these changes are unfolding now, 150 years after the opening of the canal, is a complex story of entangled human, biological and geological processes. My current research project explores the unruly environmental afterlife of the Suez Canal on land and under the surface through ethnographic work with humans and fishes across the Eastern Mediterranean Basin.

In Crete, invasivorism is increasingly being advocated as a solution for controlling alien populations in the future. Awareness campaigns inform people to “eat responsibly” by putting aliens on the menu. But invasivorism extends beyond human appetites. Marine biologists underline the need for endemic fishes to cultivate a taste for alien inhabitants. This is challenging. Fishes’ learning processes are little-known and local species have highly specialized feeding habits. In contrast to their distinguished taste, alien species are understood to undermine the food chain by “eat everything: juveniles, fishermen’s catch and each other.” Is their unsatisfiable appetite crude cannibalism or diligent invasivorism? To disentangle the meanings and politics assigned to more-than-human eating in this case, I think through concepts like distinction, gluttony, food chains and belonging.