Actually the full headline is "Fish leather is here, it’s sustainable – and it’s made from invasive species to boot," but I didn't like "to boot." The "and" already carries the meaning of adding one more thing, and "to boot" has nothing to do with a boot — yet boots are made of leather. That's just annoying.
The word "boot" in "to boot," going back to Old English, means "good, advantage, profit, use" (OED). It has a Germanic origin. The "boot" that is the footwear originates in French. It's a different lineage.
Anyway:
Lionfish... devour[] an estimated 79% of young marine life within five weeks of entering a coral reef system.... So Chavda and a team of ecologically aware fellow scuba enthusiasts decided to act by establishing Inversa, which turns lionfish into a new product: fish leather....
Inversa does not hunt the lionfish itself. Instead, it relies on educating and encouraging largely poor fishermen and women in often remote places to catch them....
So the ecological goal came first. Whether a commercially viable enterprise can be made out of lionfish leather is another matter. I doubt it! These are pretty small fish. How are you going to manufacture that into saleable leather goods? It's not like making a sharkskin suit.
That's a joke. A sharkskin suit is made out of wool (or silk), but it's called "sharkskin" because it looks like a shark's skin. And yet, when Herman Melville refers to sharkskin in "Moby-Dick," it seems to be real shark skin:
The fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The area before the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen’s boats, I saw Hosea’s brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod’s decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.
And:
With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about mid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with the other at his forge’s lungs, when Captain Ahab came along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the anvil—the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights, some of which flew close to Ahab.
“Are these thy Mother Carey’s chickens, Perth? they are always flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;—look here, they burn; but thou—thou liv’st among them without a scorch.”
What are Mother Carey's chickens? Sailors spoke of Mother Carey to represent the cruel sea, and her chickens were the storm petrels, which they thought of as the soul of dead sailors. Here's an image from 1877:
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I would argue that the 'to boot' ending of that sentence means more than just "adding one more thing"; it has the meaning of adding one more thing of advantage (as your OED reference cites). The last thing added to the sentence might have been something that was not of advantage, and in that case, 'to boot' would not have worked.
The author uses 'to boot' as an emphasis to the final element of the list: a new source of 'leather' is now available, it is sustainable, AND another great advantage is that we get it from something that we don't mind killing.
Moving on to the claims of the article, can something that society is trying to get rid of be considered 'sustainable'? I guess perhaps if once the species is eliminated from the wild, it becomes a farmed commodity.
Shagreen is a fabric made from shark skin or ray skin, notable for its uniform small bumps. It was used in Asia for secure grips on Japanese swords or Chinese bows. A court leatherworker of Louis XV popularized it as decoration on furniture and small objects. Faux shagreen is made of horsehide with small seeds pressed into it, to mimic after drying the natural bumpiness of the fish skin. Lionfish skin is smoother, apparently.
Having said all that, Ostrich skin is preferable for cowboy boots over shagreen, because of its relative durability, and larger more visible bumps. Plus it costs a lot less.
Moby Dick also has an entertaining passage on the wearing of specific whale parts as temporary, protective overclothes while flensing and trying the beasts' blubber. Sailors are a rough lot, sometimes.
Man I thought sharkskin suits were really sharks. Dang it!
"I would argue that the 'to boot' ending of that sentence means more than just "adding one more thing"; it has the meaning of adding one more thing of advantage (as your OED reference cites). "
But everything on the list was good. It was a list of good things. That the things on the list are the same kind of things is implicit. I maintain that "to boot" is annoying when talking about leather.
I think John Astin had a pair of those boots in the Hell's Bells episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery.
While driving on the road at night, hippie Randy Miller (John Astin) dies in a terrible car accident. Upon awakening, Randy finds himself in a “waiting room” for Hell occupied by a fat lady (Jody Gilbert), a boring old man (Hank Worden), and the Devil himself (Theodore J. Flicker).
"But everything on the list was good. It was a list of good things."
I think this tells us something of the mindset of the author. They're coming at this list of good things with the attitude that they're not good enough. The last thing has to be really good, to elevate the rest of the list to an acceptable level of goodness. You'd think "sustainable" would sufficiently signal the author's (and the reader's) virtue, but no.
I'm with you about "to boot" being a bad turn of phrase when discussing leather.
Better than leather. They make for tasty eating.
Lionfish are good to eat. Probably more use as food than as leather. We really should be asking for Lionfish at our local fishmonger, or at Whole Foods Market. The one near me used to carry whole Lionfish, but have now backed off from offering it. I wonder if it's because no one was willing to buy a whole Lionfish? Or any Lionfish. We need a Lionfish marketing plan to save the coral reefs.
What’s wrong with real leather? It lasts forever, looks good, etc.
This will end with Save the Lionfish.
Everyone knows that the very best military boots are made from porpoise.
John LGBTQ Henry
It's called "putting a bounty on them".
It's the "— and" that conveys that idea. ", and" would be more neutral and declarative.
But if "to boot" refers to an added bonus or bounty, why not have two extra words thrown into the sentence — for free no less?
My first reaction was to wonder why some people had undertaken to market dried lionfish in the jerky section of Whole Foods.
People for the Ethical (i.e. relativistic, opportunistic) treatment of Some, Select [Animal] Lives Matter
I like booty.
Which section of Whole Foods isn't full of jerks?
These fish should be high priced delicacies in Great Britain soon, as their gov't is trying to impose a diet of algae and cucumbers. The citizens will certainly want something more substantial.
Maybe they can make a replacement for English Leather cologne out of the remains.
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