The Puffer Forum

That's why you wear gloves! I believe their toxin is only potent when ingested, so as long as you don't eat the liver, you should be fine. Also, a puffer only receives toxin by consuming OTHER organisms that contain toxin. As far as I understand it, puffers don't produce their own.

I believe it's the product of some bacteria in the wild, but either way...

Also, a puffer only receives toxin by consuming OTHER organisms that contain toxin. As far as I understand it, puffers don't produce their own

I believe they create their own toxins. Puffers don't necessarily eat toxic animals.
As long as you don't eat the liver you will be fine. Puffers are consumed by the thousands here in New York. You can't buy the entire fish, only the rear portion. They are sold as Chicken of the sea.
When I was a kid (many years ago) northern puffers were considered a pest fish as you would sometimes catch nothing but puffers. They just all but disappeared from the Long Island Sound to be replaced by cunners or as we call them, bergalls.
No one seems to know why they disappeared but you could still catch them on the south shore of Long Island but not in the numbers of the past. I collected a few last summer that ranged from 1/4" to about 2"

Which species is that?

I think that's Sphoeroides maculatus...

The poison is in the internal organs and sometimes the skin. The poison is caused by tetrodotoxin bacteria which the puffer consumes through other organisms. In Japan, we are farm raising puffers now and they are non-toxic because they are kept away from anything containing the bacteria. We can buy whole puffers in a regular supermarket.

Yeah, I figured it was probably one of the Sphoeroides species.