War on Great Lakes lampreys goes gastronomic : Those trying to keep this parasitic scourge in check are now saying that if you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.

By accident, it seems, restaurateur Bob Bennett has become the Lamprey King.

He took on the challenge after a couple of chefs down in the Twin Cities declined the honor, perhaps out of sheer fright.

The sea lamprey, after all, is a prehistoric-looking creature--a serpentine swimmer with a tooth-embroidered sucker for a mouth, the better to unleash its vampire tendencies upon all passing fish. The sucker latches onto a target, its thorny interior and horned tongue scrape away scales and flesh, and the lamprey feasts on its victim’s blood.

Hardly an appetizing image.

But with lampreys still preying on freshwater trout, salmon and whitefish decades after their forebears first hitched rides on Great Lakes-bound ocean freighters, researchers are considering cuisine as a technique for destroying the invaders.

If life hands you lampreys, simply make lamprey bordeaux. Or lamprey with angel hair pasta, or lamprey stew over garlic mashed potatoes.

“We’ve never had trouble getting rid of fish populations when we want to eat them,” said Michael J. Hansen, professor of fisheries at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

The central experiments are taking place here in the kitchen of Bennett’s Bar & Grill, a short walk from Lake Superior’s shore, and across the Atlantic in Portugal, where saltwater lamprey is considered a delicacy.

It may be the first time that ecologists have seriously entertained the notion of turning an attacking horde into a product, even though hundreds of alien species, from the round goby to the Chinese mitten crab, now are thriving and wreaking environmental havoc in U.S. waterways.

“This is pretty novel,” Hansen said.

The University of Minnesota Sea Grant Program, part of an aquatic-research consortium, is coordinating the effort. Early cooking and marketing results for the Great Lakes lamprey are encouraging. And Bennett now knows how to kill and skin an 18-incher, even when it has established a suction hold on his stainless-steel sink.

He has served up lamprey--in four different recipes--at three select tastings here and in Cable, Wis., since the spring. A nearby smokehouse also has cured the stuff. Lamprey even appeared as brochettes served last month at a meeting in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, of the binational Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

The verdict on lamprey as food rather than feeder: “Not as god-awful as you’d think,” said Jeffrey L. Gunderson, a biologist at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Others were almost enthusiastic. Like tuna, said one Bennett customer. Kind of steaky, explained another. Beef with a herring aftertaste, opined a third, sampling the stew along with--at Bennett’s suggestion--a hearty blended Sonoma Valley red.

These meals arose from desperation.

Since 1958, the U.S. and Canadian governments have jointly poisoned the riverbeds where lamprey larvae dwell. They have tried trapping and sterilizing lamprey males.

They succeeded in shrinking the lamprey population to 10% of the total seen during the 1940s and ‘50s, when Great Lakes fish were nearly sucked to extinction.

Yet each year about half a million lamprey kill an estimated 53% of the fish in Lake Huron, the most infested of the five lakes. Overall, lampreys today eat as many Great Lakes fish as people do, Hansen said. And taxpayers from both sides of the border pay more than $10 million annually to keep the lampreys from bursting out of control.

Canada nearly made a sharp cut in its contribution this year. After much uproar, the allotment was eventually restored. But Great Lakes experts worry that budget crunches in both countries will eventually weaken the anti-lamprey campaign.

Portugal faces the opposite situation. Overfishing and deteriorating conditions have led to a lamprey shortage. This past summer, Sea Grant shipped 85 live Great Lakes specimens overseas, where testers prepared and ate them in restaurants and homes. They thought the lamprey was great.

Portuguese wholesalers said they would pay $13 a pound for Great Lakes lamprey, about $10 a pound less than the type they were used to, but enough to spark considerable interest from commercial fishermen here.

To Bennett, formerly executive chef at the Palm Valley Country Club in Palm Desert, Calif., there’s plenty of potential here at home. “The more I get involved with it,” he said, “the more I think it can be marketed in the United States.”

The momentum even has some observers concerned that a lamprey industry could lead to pressure for more, instead of fewer, of the beasts.

Bennett, for one, is already bemoaning the lack of a steady supply. He is ready now to put lamprey on his regular menu. “Maybe as an appetizer,” he said. “I almost have to, now.”