The Bible warned against eating fish without fins and scales, like the Red Sea puffer. Yet Haitian voodoo bokkors who trade in zombis, and Japanese gourmet fugu chefs who trade in Shirakoyaki, grilled soft fugu roe, depend on it for commerce. I have eaten some weird things in my travels. Squishy blood pudding at a native Christmas dinner on the island of Guadeloupe. Greasy hairy pig's tails at a folksinger's house in Dublin.
Manta rays in Malaysia.
But the Japanese practice of eating a fish bearing a nerve toxin 500 times deadlier than cyanide is most fascinating of all. Centuries of Japanese gourmets have dropped dead at their chopsticks over a plate of fugu. The Kabuki actor Mitsugora Bando VIII, declared a living national treasure by the Japanese government until his death in 1975 was one of them.