“I just bring people together, but the lionfish is the glue.”

Hunting is in Lisette’s blood. Armed with just a hand-loaded pole spear and a “zookeeper” trap her friend invented, she looks completely at ease underwater, even as she spots her spike-covered prey. Recalling her first time prowling the clear Caribbean waters, she muses, “I shot the first lionfish, and I was like, I have to do this for the rest of my life.” 

It’s not a carnal urge that pushes the huntress to dive deeper in search of her striking aquatic prize, but rather a sense of duty to her community — both human and ecological. Born in the Netherlands, Lisette first fell in love with the sea while snorkeling Curaçao’s crystal-clear waters on family holidays. 

As an adult, she gained her diving certification which she put to good use off the shores of Australia, New Zealand, and Bangladesh. On a return dive in Curaçao in 2010, she spotted something familiar yet foreign. “I saw a lionfish and was like, that’s weird. I recognize that from Asia,” she remembers. After confirming her suspicions with a local marine biologist, Lisette, now a journalist, decided to write a piece on the invasive species, but quickly realized that more needed to be done. “More and more, I got a little bit obsessed with the fish,” she says. 

The lionfish invasion of the Caribbean is a well-documented phenomenon, with the first sightings in Florida in the 1980s and subsequent spread across the region down to Lisette’s childhood stomping (or rather, snorkeling) grounds of Curaçao. Lisette actually learned her unique trade from visiting American sport fishermen, who were sadly familiar with the dangers the invasive fish pose. With no natural predators and a voracious appetite, lionfish threaten the reef’s delicate ecosystem. Paired with human intervention, it’s a recipe for environmental disaster. As Lisette explains, “We overfish from the top…the big grouper and big snapper…and now we have a lionfish that basically overfishes from the bottom…so those two work towards each other and at the end, there’s not enough fish left on the reefs.” 

Luckily, Lisette isn’t one to shy away from a challenge. And it’s this very drive paired with her entrepreneurial spirit and general joie de vivre that’s earned Lisette Keus her regal title: The Lionfish Huntress of Curaçao.

Lionfish Crazy

Lisette’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of lionfish doesn’t dry up once she’s back on land. With the care of a surgeon, she expertly butchers the fish to ensure every piece of hard-won anatomy is put to good use. “I think food is very underestimated,” she says, “People don’t know the amount of effort other people put in getting food to the table.” 

Ever since coming across the invasive species on that fateful dive back in 2010, Lisette has had an insatiable appetite for lionfish knowledge, a quirk she channeled into a passion with her business, Lionfish Caribbean. This one-of-a-kind ocean-aware organization is part restaurant, part boutique, part education project, and part community center, all dedicated to its controversial namesake sea creature. As the huntress explains it, “I just bring people together, but the lionfish is the glue.” 

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Lionfish Caribbean wasn’t a bullseye right out of the gate. Once she mastered lionfish hunting, Lisette decided to try selling the fish to local restaurants but found that chefs didn’t know what to do with the intimidating seafood. Rather than let that stop her, the huntress took matters into her own hands. She recounts, “I went in with a cooler full of fish, like, okay, this is a lionfish, this is how you clean it. These are recipes, this is what you can make with it. This cooler is free, the next one you can buy off of me.” 

During COVID, she kept her business afloat by implementing the same strategy at local grocery stores and starting her own food truck, Lionfish and Mangoes, for which she also minimized food waste by turning overripe, unpicked mangoes into hot sauce and cocktails. 

After building a market for the edible parts of the lionfish, Lisette decided to dive deeper. She cut off the fins, dried them in the Curaçao sun, and turned them into earrings. She learned to draw the venom out of the spines and repurpose them into sewing needles and toothpicks. And her newest project? Tanning lionfish skin to use as a leather alternative for wallets, bowties, and purses, all handcrafted by a local artisan.

Eye on the Prize

Like a shark, Lisette is always on the move. She has her eye on a Lionfish Caribbean expansion to Curaçao’s sister island of Bonaire, with a few more outposts possibly on the horizon. At the crux of her ambitious plans is a new strategy: She wants every business to be a community affair. “It’s more and more a community business,” Lisette gushes, “So, very locally, the hunters are the owners of the business…I’m going to set it up and then sell shares to the local community who will supply the restaurant.” “At the end of the year,” she adds, “people benefit from the effort they put in.” 

Eco-Tourism Tips

Planning a picture-perfect Curaçao vacation doesn’t have to be at odds with supporting the health of its reefs. In fact, Lisette (always on the hunt for a good time) highly recommends incorporating some lionfish fun into your visit. “First of all,” she emphasizes, “if you see lionfish on the menu, eat lionfish instead of other fish [like grouper or snapper].” Lionfish serves as a reef-friendly and sustainable alternative to other overfished species. Increased demand in local restaurants will encourage more job opportunities for local divers and increased population control for the rapidly breeding invasive species. 

If you really want to get your feet wet, opt for a lionfish-hunting class, readily available for the PADI-certified at many of Curaçao’s local dive shops. Once you’ve snagged your prize, visit a local chef like Helmi Smeulders for a lionfish-focused cooking lesson, or bring your catch to Lionfish Caribbean for a jewelry-making class. 

Regardless of how you spend your trip, you can’t leave Curaçao without picking up a pair of Lisette’s signature lionfish earrings from the flagship Kura Hulanda Village shop, where you just might come face-to-face with the Lionfish Huntress of Curaçao herself.