According to Chesapeake Bay Magazine, a team of engineers at the Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River in Maryland recently prevented 3,000 invasive fish from entering the Chesapeake Bay.

The fish were removed from a fish lift, a “water-filled elevator” designed to help migrating native fish overcome the dam to their spawning grounds upstream. The fish lift also serves as a trap for invasive species, allowing technicians to go in and remove anything that doesn’t belong there — mostly northern snakeheads, but also species like blue catfish and flathead catfish.

The removed fish were taken to fish wholesaler JJ McDonnell in Maryland for processing and many were donated to local food banks.

Despite their unappealing name, northern snakeheads are edible—Outdoor Life even called them “possibly the most delicious freshwater fish ever.”

To make the snakehead more attractive to consumers, efforts are underway to rename it the “Chesapeake Channa.” Similar renaming attempts have worked with other fish, notably the Black Toothfish, which was successfully renamed the Chilean Seabass, even though it is neither native to Chile nor a bass.

Similar efforts are currently underway to rename the invasive Asian carp “Copi,” but in this case the biggest obstacle may be the fish’s unappetizing appearance rather than its name.

Whatever the various species end up being called, experts are increasingly urging people to eat more invasive species to control populations. These include crayfish in the United Kingdom, Midas cichlids in the Philippines, lionfish in Bermuda and devilfish in Texas, Florida and Mexico.

Many in the movement have already said, “If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em.”

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