Tag Archives: hawaii

High Tide: Hallucinogenic Fish

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I love to eat fish.

Fish is by-and-large my favorite dietary source of protein, and living in Hawai`i means that I get to indulge in this adoration for finned flesh perhaps more often than I should. In the islands, there are plentiful, fresh fish of a staggering diversity sold and consumed everywhere you turn; firm and buttery a`u (Pacific blue marlin, Makaira nigricans), rich opah (Lampris regius), ubiquitous mahimahi (Coryphaena hippurus) and `ahi (Thunnus), lean and flaky ono (Acanthocybium solandri), and delicate `opakapaka (Pristipomoides filamentosus) are just a few. There’s also uhu, ulua, aku, uku, mamo, manini, akule, palani, awa, ama`ama, u`u, opelu, nenue, kamanu, omaka, hapu`u, `ula`ula koa`e, moi, ukikiki, kahala, kala, umaumalei, wahanui, and moano too. Introduced species? Hawai`i has roi, ta`ape, and to`au. Great, glistening troughs of poke line the deli section of just about every grocery outlet on my island (Safeway, local chains….liquor stores), and upon seeing them, I inevitably have to command my legs to carry me away from a fate involving a plastic container of heaven, chopsticks, and a wallet seven dollars lighter.

There are a number of reasons why avoiding the reduced price special on the limu `ahi at the Liliha Foodland may be a wise decision for just about anyone (temporarily salvaged funds unconsidered). As with any food, there are inherent risks, and fish have a unique repertoire of ways they can make a regretful meal. Perhaps the most readily publicized is the health risk posed by the bioaccumulation of methylmercury in the tissues of a number of fish species typically taken as food by humans. One bite of a particularly metal-saturated swordfish steak isn’t going to promptly send you to tea with Alice and a rabbit, and the accumulation of the poison in humans takes time (and LOTS of contaminated fish consumption). But, there are more acute ways a fish filet can bite back. For one, the fish may be highly endogenously toxic, meaning that the fish embeds poisonous compounds into its own essence, it’s own bodily tissues. Pufferfish are well-known for this approach, and many species have organs loaded with tetrodotoxin (TTX), a naturally-occurring, chemical Angel of Death so potent that it makes cyanide look like fucking ibuprofen. Preparing pufferfish for the passage between human lips takes all the insane, brow-beading, calculated finesse of disarming a bomb, but despite the supreme level of care of highly-trained culinary experts, every so often, people drop dead after ingesting the fish. Really damn dead. There are also the ever-present risks of conventional, bacterial food poisoning and infection with parasites like tapeworms and roundworms, both of which are more likely to occur in the less-than-cooked form of fish (my personal favorite state of fish).

Yes, you potentially need to watch what you eat when it comes to fish, whether you risk the slow march of mercury toxicity or a weekend hovering over the world’s unhappiest toilet. These risks are generally understood and expected.

What isn’t expected from your seafood? That you might get high off of it.

The phenomenon is called “ichthyoallyeinotoxism” or “hallucinogenic fish inebriation”; both are just jargony ways of saying that, somehow, the catch of the day has you hearing colors. Occurrences are uncommon, but there are plenty of baffling records, ancient and modern, of humans coming away from their sea-borne suppers with more to worry about than a bit of lemon wedge-fueled acid reflux. Like how to convince the grumpy, five-headed emu in the corner of the room that you don’t have any millipedes hiding under your fingernails.


“Alright, everybody, time to get weird!”

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Macabre Moths: The Infernal Nocturnals

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My girlfriend is terrified of moths.

She hates them; purely, unabashedly, and completely. She despises their habit of gracelessly barreling out of the dark, smashing into anything and everything (including human faces) in a flurry of fluttering wings. She hates the way they persistently ram themselves into outdoor lights,  which oh-so conveniently tend to be right above her head just outside of the front door, cutting her off from the frustratingly close safety of her house. She loathes the angry drumming sound they make when they clumsily bat their wings against whatever wall or window they are crawling across. She shivers at the mention of their wings, which she describes as “dusty” (the powdery coating is actually made up of very tiny scales that cover the wing; butterflies have these as well). I’ve watched her spot a particularly massive, beastly, mothy bastard spread out sinisterly underneath a neighbor’s outside window sill, and immediately swing her path past it into a wide berth, eyes cautiously locked on the insect threat. She does not like them here or there. She does not like them anywhere. My girlfriend does not like the moth. She does not like them, David Lee Roth.

Because of her undeniably real, demonstrably intense dislike of moths, she was not exactly appreciative of the fact that the last week of July (July 19th through July 27th) was National Moth Week (or of the fact that I’m writing this blog post at all, frankly). For those of you that are unfamiliar, National Moth Week, started in 2011, is a global citizen science effort wherein groups of those inclined (called “moth-ers”, but I like to call them “moth-heads”) set out into the night equipped with lights, a white sheet, a bait mixture made of something like rotten fruit, molasses, or beer (preferably not the good shit; stick to domestic swill like Bud or Coors), and perhaps a camera for recording purposes…all of this to observe and categorize whatever moths they find attracted to their lights or bait, and to potentially contribute their findings to a multitude of databases. In this bit of crowdsourcing of data collection, we are able to know a bit more about the distribution of moth species (and for many species, where they turn up in the world is not well-known), and their general abundance over time, which is important to keep track of, considering that moths are good early indicators of decline in an ecosystem’s ecological health. Another major focus of National Moth Week is to bring awareness to moths, which are oftentimes regarded as boring, drab nuisances instead of the diverse, often colorful, interesting animals that they are. NMW also provides an opportunity to get groups of school age children together to not just learn about moths and the natural world that surrounds where they live, but to take part in a globally held citizen science project, hopefully inspiring some of them to take interest in the biological sciences in a more permanent sense.

Truthfully, moths are far more interesting than we give them credit for. They are diverse in form, size, coloration, and behavior. They are unfortunately pegged as dull creatures, which, at their best, are annoying, and at their worst, a pest that destroys clothes and crops. There’s a single thread runs through their popular characterization; one that paints moths as fundamentally benign, like a house fly, or a slug…something to put up with, and nothing to get too excited about; the “white bread” of the insect world. But, while it’s important to remember that moths are interesting by being incredibly important members of their ecological communities, as insatiable, leaf-obliterating larvae, as pollinators of flowering plants, or as nutrition for everything from birds to bats…there are a number of species that solidly destroy the notion that moths are innocuous at the acutely individual level. Some species are downright threatening, blatantly ignoring the memo about how moths are “supposed” to be the awkward, dirty, night shift butterflies of the world and nothing more disconcerting. These species, twisted, creepy, grotesque, and malicious even by arthropod standards, make it difficult for me or anyone else to dismiss my girlfriend’s mottephobia (the fear of moths) as being unfounded.

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