A fish capable of snapping soft-drink cans in half is destroying fishing nets and livelihoods.
For Greek small-scale fishermen, the invasion of pufferfish represents yet another blow to a sector already under severe strain from rising costs, depleted fish stocks, warming seas and decades of overfishing.
“The pufferfish is responsible for 80 per cent of the damage to the sea”… “The sea is dead and dying,” say the fishermen.
Below: the bite mark of a pufferfish shown in the first image taken from Wikipedia.
Lagocephalus sceleratus has now reached the northern Adriatic: it is poisonous and can bite humans.
Read this article on invasive species in the Mediterranean too
Written on 7 August, updated on 22 August 2026
