Python hunter Bayo Hernandez prefers his snake ground up like hamburger meat with ketchup, mustard, and mayo. Another hunter fancies the slithering scourge of the Everglades in a stir fry or chili.
And there’s always celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for diced python in a lettuce wrap with shallots, pineapple, and jalapeno.
But the Florida Department of Health has recently established an advisory of “do not consume python” caught in the state no matter the snake size because of the risk of unhealthy mercury levels in its meat.
The recommendation, which irks at least one scientist who said pythons caught in the southwestern part of the state have lower mercury levels, means a nascent scheme to assist in the cull of the apex predators by making them dinner-table fare is a no-go.
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“It’s unfortunate. I don’t know how much help it would have been if people were consuming pythons, but it certainly doesn’t hurt,” said Darren Rumbold, a Florida Gulf Coast University professor of marine and Earth science.
Similar to fish, the department could have made portion recommendations or specified regions where mercury levels made it unsafe to eat animals caught there, Rumbold said.
“I think the health department was being overly cautious by saying let’s not let anybody eat it,” he said.
It’s unclear when the python consumption advisory was issued. Multiple calls and emails to the department of health were not returned. But the toxicology results on 487 snakes reviewed by the department, and that led to the advisory, were explained in a March 8 letter to FWC's non-native wildlife coordinator McKayla Spencer,
The letter, which was obtained through a request to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, was from health department administrator Michael Mitchell. It notes that because there is no known meal size for snakes, the standard 8 ounces used for fish was also used in the python testing.
In addition to testing mercury levels in fish harvested from both fresh and marine waters, Mitchell said the FWC has also tested mercury levels in pythons because “consumers are asking if the meat is safe to eat.”
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The result by the health department in conjunction with FWC was a “Do Not Consume Python” advisory.
That doesn't mean its against the law to eat python, it's just not recommended, according to FWC's Python Challenge website.
Why is mercury harmful if consumed in python meat or fish?
State officials monitor mercury levels because the naturally occurring chemical element is a neurotoxin that can impair brain functioning, harm the kidneys and damage the nervous systems, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It's especially harmful to unborn babies and young children.
Hernandez, who is a contract python hunter for the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), said he knows mercury levels can be high in pythons. It’s not a meal he has every day.
“But there are many recipes out there and you can experiment,” he said. “If you do it in chunks, it’s very hard and chewy. How you season it is how it’s going to taste.”
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Hernandez is participating in this week’s Python Challenge. As of Monday, he had caught six snakes and planned to hunt every night until the 5 p.m. Sunday cutoff time.
It was in the fall of 2020 that an initiative was mentioned at a SFWMD board meeting about the possibility of issuing advisories on safely eating pythons. Eric Sutton, who was director of FWC at the time, discussed the proposal during an update on the state’s response to a charge by Gov. Ron DeSantis to find novel ways to fight the invasive snake.
The state had already initiated the annual Python Challenge, hired contract hunters, invested in near-infrared technology to better see the snakes, trained python-sniffing dogs, tried catching them in cages, tracking them by radio tags and, in 2017, brought in Irula tribesman from India to pursue the predators.
“The only method that works efficiently is the human catcher,” Hernandez said.
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Studies find lower mercury levels in some Florida pythons depending on area
Rumbold studied python mercury levels in areas near Naples. He published a paper in 2019 in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology about the findings. His co-author was Ian Bartoszek of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.
Their study found lower mercury levels in southwest Florida snakes than those in Everglades National Park. Park pythons were found in a 2012 study by the U.S. Geological Survey to have “astonishingly high” levels of mercury.
Much of the mercury in Florida comes from pollution in the sky, raining down from towering clouds that grab it in the upper levels of the atmosphere. Burning coal, oil and wood can release mercury into the air.
In Everglades National Park, the mercury can mix with sulfur coming from agriculture upstream. The sulfur oxidizes to sulfate, which energizes microbes that turn mercury into methylmercury, which is what accumulates in the food chain.
Because it’s drier in southwest Florida, there’s less mercury-heavy fish being consumed by animals that are then consumed by pythons, Rumbold said.
“The mercury biomagnifies as it gets passed through the food chain. The more pythons are integrated into an aquatic food web, the likelier they are to have mercury,” Rumbold said.
The 2019 study also found little correlation between python size, age and mercury level. In the ocean, the largest, oldest fish that have been feeding on smaller prey generally have the highest concentrations of mercury.
Rumbold thinks the health department could have selectively chosen to allow python consumption from snakes caught in the southwest area of the state, similar to advisories issued for fish based on where they are caught.
“They don’t want to have to monitor pythons over time, so they don’t want to issue anything that is region specific,” Rumbold said.
Florida earnestly began hunting pythons in about 2012. In 2017, the South Florida Water Management District and FWC began a more structured program to hire python hunters.
More than 14,500 pythons have been removed since the FWC and the district teamed up to combat the invasive species. The most pythons removed in a single year was 2,629 in 2020.
The hype around Florida’s python hunters and the annual Python Challenge has attracted rocker Ozzy Osbourne, who participated in a hunt for his show “Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour.” Chef Gordon Ramsey caught and cooked a python for his show “The F Word.” Ramsay said the python was dry and sinewy, so he added bacon fat and ground it up the way Hernandez likes it.
Hernandez said he also eats invasive iguanas.
“Whenever my kids come over I surprise them,” Hernandez said. “If you ask my oldest son what is the weirdest thing he’s eaten, he will say, ‘I don’t know, ask my dad.’”
Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She coversreal estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com.Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
