Why I don’t eat cubera snapper

Usually what we eat on the Halcón is whatever we catch—jack crevalle, red snapper, grouper, yellow jack, amberjack, Cubera snapper. Not this year.

One day Fletcher brought a good-sized mangrove (or mud) snapper back to the boat. He asked our cook, Peachy, if it was the fried fish we had for lunch the next day. Nope, Peachy said. It was malo. “Eats on the bottom,” he told us. 

So almost all of the fish we’ve eaten has been procured by Elvis, our dive master, who goes out spear fishing in deeper water while we’re flyfishing off the flats.

Yesterday Elvis speared a massive cubera snapper, at least 40 pounds, and Pedro brought it back to the boat. Peachy looked at it with disgust.

 

 

 

“Es bueno,” Pedro said. “Can you cook this up for dinner tonight?”

Peachy took the fish from Pedro without saying anything else, but I knew he wasn’t happy about it. 

Here’s what I think is going on: Peachy is worried the mud snapper and the Cubera have ciguatera. This is an odd disease. You get it from eating fish poisoned from eating smaller fish that have the cigua toxin, which is neurological. Sardines and other bait fish eat algae that forms on dead coral and then the bigger fish eat the sardines and it keeps moving up the food chain, the toxin concentrating as it goes until it reaches its pinnacle in something like the 40-lb. cubera snapper Pedro brought back to the boat.

The thing about ciguatera is that it is tasteless and heat stable so cooking the fish doesn’t make it safe to eat. And if you eat fish poisoned with ciguatera, it’s like severe food poisoning—only worse. Besides the nausea and diarrhea, your hands and feet tingle and prick and you feel the need to constantly scratch them. They say you also feel like your teeth are falling out. But one of the weirdest symptoms is hot and cold inversion; you touch an icy glass of beer and it feels like it’s burning your hand or you think scalding water is cold.

I think the reason Peachy is worried about ciguatera is because of the hurricanes that ripped through Cuba last year. Groves of mangroves on some of the keys have been completely stripped of leaves. And the guides have said that the reef got torn up pretty good. Which can make for good fishing because there’s more plankton and stuff floating in the water. But it’s this same plankton that produces the dinoflagellate toxin that is eaten by the sardines and passed on to the larger reef fish—barracuda, grouper, jacks, snappers.

Last night for dinner Peachy cooked up several types of fish, as he usually does. We started with a dark sashimi, probably jack crevalle, doused in wasabi and soy sauce, followed by a whole grilled snapper and a dish of chunked white fish stewed with tomatoes and onions and olives. When Peachy came out at the beginning of dinner, as he always does, Pedro asked him if the fish stew was cubera. Peachy pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders. “I think maybe,” he said.

 

 

 

The sashimi was fabulous as was the grilled snapper. I stayed away from the stew. But Pedro had several helpings.

This morning he was quiet at breakfast and excused himself after having little more than some orange juice and a little bread. We were supposed to fish together but he begged off. Said his back was bothering him and he thought he’d just rest in his cabin. I suggested he might want to take a hot shower.

“I thought of that,” he said, scratching at his hands. “But there’s no hot water this morning. I had it turned to scalding and it was still freezing. In fact, it was so cold that my hands and feet are still tingling.”

I’m sure he’ll be fine. They say ciguatera usually goes away in two or three days and seldom kills people.

Afterwards, I went down into the galley and talked to Peachy. “Qué sucedió a los pescados de Pedro?” I asked him.

Peachy smiled. “I feed it to barracuda and sharks,” he said.

 “Bueno.”

Then Peachy went back to rolling out some dough. I think we’re having pizza for lunch. With fresh sardines. I’m guessing Pedro will miss it. I might too.