Fish Skin Leather
Inversa, a company founded in 2020, is trying to make lionfish, an invasive species, into a product- fish skin leather.
Lionfish can be made into a special fish skin. Its interlaced fiber structure makes the skin thin and durable. Each lionfish can be made into a piece of leather, with an area ranging from 40 to 75 square inches (about 258 to 483 square centimeters), with an average of 58 square inches (about 374 square centimeters). Inversa uses a desiccant to tan and dye the fish skins and sell them to partner brands to make sneakers, wallets, belts, bags, and watch straps.
Up to now, Inversa's partners include custom leather manufacturer Teton Leather, Italian footwear brand P44, etc.
Founded by Aarav Chavda, Roland Salatino, and others, Inversa hopes to protect coral reefs and biodiversity while reducing the environmental impact of the fashion industry. Because lionfish are a flooded exotic species in some waters, making it into fish-skin leather could help correct ecological imbalances caused by human error decades ago.
Inversa said that this kind of leather is sustainable and renewable, which not only is more sustainable than traditional leather but also helps to protect biodiversity. For example, it does not require large-scale grazing, which will not lead to soil degradation and methane emissions. "Our leather is made from invasive species, which helps to solve the environmental crisis and protect biodiversity. Each leather can save 70,000 reef-native fishes and actively heal our planet," says the company's official website.
In addition, Inversa has a sister brand, Salatino Seafood, which will send the lionfish meat to restaurants, sells it as fillets, and make the lionfish bones into handicrafts by partnering with some jewelry manufacturers.
Although the lionfish leather is tanned and dyed by Inversa, the raw material comes from local fishermen. “In many areas, especially in the Caribbean, where the income is low, there is no market for lionfish. The fish destroys the reefs, which support the livelihood of the fishery cooperatives, but there is nothing the locals can do about it. They can hunt lionfish, but this takes time and it means they can't hunt anything else, such as lobster and grouper, which is unfortunate," Aarav Chavda told The Guardian.
Currently, Inversa is planning to set up a fishery cooperative in Quintana Roo, Mexico, to ensure that fishermen will be paid quickly and fairly while financing the purchase of new equipment.
The lionfish is native to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and was later introduced to North America as an ornamental fish. During the process, a handful of lionfish slipped undetected into Atlantic waters off the coast of Florida. Fast forward 37 years and the invasive lionfish has completely taken over the Atlantic Ocean from Boston to Brazil to Barcelona. With no natural predators, they’ve infested the entire Mediterranean. And everywhere they appear, they destroy coral reefs and entire oceanic food chains.
A group of American divers, including Aarav Chavda (CEO of Inversa), found that lionfish have caused destructive damage to some marine organisms in the invasion areas, and witnessed the disappearance of some colorful fish and the destruction of coral reefs. Inversa claims that a lionfish living near a coral reef can kill 79% of young marine life within 5 weeks of entering a coral reef system, eventually causing the reef to die from overgrown algae.
Coral reefs have an important impact on the global environment. They produce half of the Earth's oxygen while absorbing nearly one-third of the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels burning.
