DiveonUtila
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Has anyone else experienced or know of a successful invasive Lionfish control programme being initiated in the Caribbean?
Here on Utila, there has been great success by the efforts of the local marine ecology centre, UCME. They have issued a special license to dive shops on the Island, allowing them to use Hawaiin Slings to kill (only) Lionfish in an attempt to at least keep the dive sites here free from Lionfish and provide a haven for jeuvenille fish to grow.
In exchange for issuing these "Lionfish spears", the dive shops are collecting important data about the fish at the time of capture, such as size and depth it was found, to help shed more light on how these fish distribute themselves.
For example, our dive shop alone in the last three months has speared 77 invasive Lionfish! And given how quickly these fish breed and spread, just think how much this effort has helped protect native species. With the other 8 dive shops on Utila in hot persuit, I feel it is perhaps an example about how a determind collective can rally together and if not irradiacte, at least control a species which has, thanks to the introduction by man, in some areas decimated the local juevenille species.
Here on Utila, there has been great success by the efforts of the local marine ecology centre, UCME. They have issued a special license to dive shops on the Island, allowing them to use Hawaiin Slings to kill (only) Lionfish in an attempt to at least keep the dive sites here free from Lionfish and provide a haven for jeuvenille fish to grow.
In exchange for issuing these "Lionfish spears", the dive shops are collecting important data about the fish at the time of capture, such as size and depth it was found, to help shed more light on how these fish distribute themselves.
For example, our dive shop alone in the last three months has speared 77 invasive Lionfish! And given how quickly these fish breed and spread, just think how much this effort has helped protect native species. With the other 8 dive shops on Utila in hot persuit, I feel it is perhaps an example about how a determind collective can rally together and if not irradiacte, at least control a species which has, thanks to the introduction by man, in some areas decimated the local juevenille species.
