Under the dining tents at Peg Leg’s Restaurant at Nanny Cay, butcher Devin “Cowboy” Schultz deftly filleted 10 large lionfish for a growing crowd on Saturday.
Asked by an onlooker if the fish were safe to handle, Mr. Schultz appeared to wince at the question, but then he told the crowd he had just accidentally poked himself.
“Their heads are really spiky,” he said, adding, “I touch their spikes when they’re dead and they never bother me, so it must be when they alive when they got the toxin.”
The dorsal spines are still needle sharp, but that didn’t seem to bother Mr. Schultz too much.
“All I know is they taste good,” he said with a shrug.
Mr. Schultz, who works at Steakation Butchers at Wickhams Cay II, was giving the spectators a clinic in fish filleting to cap off a week of scuba diving and conservation-related activities for Wreck Week 2025.
As in previous years, Wreck Week was organised by BVI Scuba Organisation President Kim Huish, who told the Beacon Saturday that the event was another success.
“It’s about highlighting and showcasing the BVI, but it’s also about giving back to the BVI,” she said. “Last year was good too, you know, but this year I think we were able to push it up a notch.”
Among the land-based activities this year, three beaches were cleaned, with more than 1,000 kilograms of detritus removed from Cane Garden Bay, Trellis Bay and Anegada, according to Ms. Huish.
Also like last year, the BVISO teamed up with the National Parks Trust to organise a visit to Salt Island with three women who once lived there.
This year’s underwater activities included trips to sunken ships and several other dive sites.
Among the participants were Rebecca Strauss, the editor of the diving industry news website DiveIn, and Tori Matheis, the creative director for the St. Thomas-based Mango Media.
Ms. Huish invited the pair to join the Wreck Week flotilla and record their experience touring dive sites across the territory.
Ms. Strauss told the Beacon she had previously visited the territory in 2008, and she commented on how much the islands had changed.
Her favourite dive site was Wreck Alley near Cooper Island, she said.
“We had lots of really good marine life on that wreck,” Ms. Strauss said. “On those wrecks, we had some free-swimming eel, a turtle, a reef shark — great visibility.”
Ms. Matheis said that even after so many dives and above-water activities, the wreck of the RMS Rhone stood out as a jewel in the territory’s crown of scuba attractions.
“The Rhone was beautiful,” she said. “And all of the dive shops we dived with were amazing. They were professional. They gave us good facts, good history.”
Lionfish in the VI
Although lionfish were on the menu Saturday night, Mses. Matheis and Strauss told the Beacon they spotted fewer than a dozen of the invasive species during their time in the territory.
On Saturday evening, Mr. Schultz, the butcher, had 10, which he filleted with practised speed.
As he laid each nearly translucent fillet on the cutting board, a chef fried some of them one by one for fish tacos.
The rest of the fresh fish was set aside for ceviche, which joined the tacos on display, free for passers-by to sample.
British Caribbean News
