The burbot (BUR-but) fish looks like an eel. It is very slimy. When the burbot is caught, it wraps its slippery body around the fisherman’s arm. Yuck!

But fishermen aren’t saying “yuck” when they sit down to eat the burbot. This yummy fish is sometimes called the “poor man’s lobster.”

Twice a year, fishermen on the Wyoming-Utah line have contests. If they catch one of 50 burbot with electronic tags, they can win up to $10,000! They get other prizes for catching the biggest burbot or the greatest amount of burbot.

Why all the prizes? The burbot lives where it doesn’t belong. The predator eats the eggs of salmon and other species. It threatens an endangered species called pikeminnow. Fishermen are trying to get rid of the burbot. They have to kill every burbot they catch.

“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth.””—Genesis 1:26