Bay Area men's plan to market invasive fish from Mexico hits snag in US

In the rivers of southern Mexico, a lizard-like fish with armor for skin has taken over the habitat of the native fish like róbalo and mojarra. Locals call it the pez diablo, or devil fish, and long assumed it was poisonous. When fishermen bring up their nets, they are almost full of the squiggly, ugly creature, an invasive suckerfish from Brazil often bred for aquariums.

It turns out pez diablo is not only edible but actually tastes pretty good, as UC Berkeley graduate student Mike Mitchell learned. As a visiting Fulbright scholar at the Juarez Autonomous University of Tabasco, a Mexican state where the pez diablo is rampant, Mitchell came up with what seemed like the perfect mission-based business plan: He would help get rid of the pest by exporting it to a U.S. market eager for sustainable protein. He and co-founder Sam Bordia secured seed money for a company they called Acari Fish, built a processing plant in the town of Simón Sarlat and began contracting with local fishing co-ops.

There was just one catch.

The first big planned shipment to the U.S. last month was held up at the border because of an obscure law that protects American catfish farmers from cheaper Asian imports. The law effectively bans the import of any species of catfish under the scientific order siluriformes, even though its main targets are a few types cultivated in Vietnam and China.

“There are 3,200 species of catfish under siluriformes, one of which, unfortunately, is ours,” said Bordia. He and Mitchell just completed masters degrees in development practice at UC Berkeley, where their venture received grants totaling $9,500.

While the pez diablo’s appearance and origin story, most likely an overgrown aquarium escapee, don’t make it sound very appetizing, the harvest of an edible, wild-caught fish that helps, rather than hurts, the environment is an appealing proposition. The acari, as it’s called in Brazil, is fished commercially in its native Amazon; it’s just not popular in Mexico.

With wild fish stocks declining and concerns rising around sustainability and the use of antibiotics in imported farmed seafood, Bay Area seafood companies have started to sell other invasive seafood species in recent years, such as Asian carp and lionfish.

Bill Foss, co-founder of San Francisco seafood wholesaler TwoXSea, said he is planning to expand his purchase of Asian carp from Kentucky, a highly destructive nonnative fish that is on the brink of invading the Great Lakes. The company sells 5,000 pounds of Asian carp a month.

“All these invasive species are hitting new flavor profiles,” said Foss, who ordered the ill-fated pez diablo shipment after trying some samples. “I think it’s really delicious.”

He has also looked into getting the fish from Florida and Texas, where it is also invasive, but hasn’t found any commercial fishermen who catch it.

Mitchell said that Mexico’s National Fisheries Commission found pez diablo has more omega-3s than wild salmon. It’s also high in hemoglobin, a protein also found in beef, which is what makes it taste meaty and allows it to hold together well in patties and meatballs.

“It’s not like a white fish. It doesn’t flake. It bonds and forms proteins like steak,” Foss said.

Bordia and Mitchell are also working with a Midwestern company to create their own El Diablito brand fish jerky.

The pair is still buying from the fishermen who work in the rivers near Simón Sarlat, where on average 70 percent of their catch is pez diablo rather than native fish, according to Salomón Páramo Delgadillo, a professor in biological sciences at Juarez Autonomous University of Tabasco, who advised Mitchell about the nonnative species.

Part of the reason may be overfishing of native species, Páramo Delgadillo said in an email. In addition, the pez diablo preys on the young of the native mojarra and has no natural predators. The fish began appearing in the area in 1997 and became a problem during floods in 2007, he said.

For now, Mitchell and Bordia are trying to expand their market to Canada and within Mexico, where they sell the fish to a few restaurants and Mexico City’s Google campus cafeteria. Through a nonprofit arm of the business, they are donating some of the fish to a group that helps migrants passing through Mexico.

“This is not how I expected to spend my summer,” said Bordia, who had hoped the business would be launched in the U.S. by now.

The U.S. trade war over imported catfish dates back to a change in the 2002 Farm Bill by former U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), whose state is one of the country’s biggest farmed catfish producers.

In 2008, Cochran changed the jurisdiction of catfish inspection to the U.S. Department of Agriculture from the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates every other type of fish and shellfish. The move continues to be criticized by conservatives as unnecessary and burdensome, estimating that the extra layer of bureaucracy has cost taxpayers $200 million in the decade since.

Those who want to export catfish to the United States must have USDA-compliant facilities both abroad and domestically, the cost of which is too high for most small companies, Bordia said. Additionally, the country of origin must create additional legislation to comply with the USDA standards, something Mexico, which does not have a catfish industry, is unlikely to do.

Bordia and Mitchell have spoken to lobbyists in Washington, D.C., about getting an exemption to the catfish import rule for the pez diablo. Meanwhile, their American customers have to wait.

Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan

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