Lionfish Awareness and Elimination

[AnotherNewguy]

Isn't it mostly just anecdotal that the grouper prey on lionfish based on people deliberately trying to teach them to do so? Has it been universally accepted that they'll do so on their own in the wild? Seems like the schools of defenseless fish would be a much easier meal than to fuss with a lionfish - particularly when you're dealing with the bigger ones.

 

[AnotherNewguy]

Finally, another place that is being watched carefully is the Flower Gardens Banks NMS. That area has been carefully documented and studied for over two decades and a vast bank of data exists for its population density. In all likelihood, lionfish will arrive there this summer (already reported on Sonnier Banks...about 70 miles to the east). Researchers will pretty much be able to document the very day they get there, and we'll be able to watch in real time the exact effect upon reef fish density, etc...as time goes on.

Just a few thoughts.

Wow, the data that could be collected there would be invaluable. Hopefully it's not as bad as we've been led to believe.

 

[b-dog]

I think about Hawaii where they introduced the peacock grouper and the blue line snapper in the 50s and now they are dominant predators there. People go out and try to cull them with roi roundups and so forth but they are still there even with all the good intentions.

In contrast there were problems with the numbers of yellow tangs so what they did was create marine reserves for them and they quickly rebounded because they have undisturbed places to breed and do there thing. So if people allow nature to go about its business it seems nature will do just fine without any help from humanity. The yellow tang rebound was not because they hunted the invasive snappers and groupers, it was because they gave the yellow tang a place to do it's fish stuff without humans hunting or disturbing their environment and when left alone they seem to be able to do very well.

I just tend to think that man is much more destructive to ecosystems than just about any other species and if people want the fish and reefs to be healthy then they need to have places where the fish are not hunted or disturbed and then they will do just fine.

 

[danvolker]

1. A few points.... when nature is involved in "fixing" an issue in population dynamics, the time scale could be in the 100's or thousands of years
2. In a Predator/Prey model, of which the Lionfish could represent a classic example, the lionfish "would be expected" to populate exponentially in response to an unfettered prey/food supply, with no predation upon it.
3. The lionfish would be expected to continue it's population expansion, until it begins to wipe out the prey, and begins to have difficulty finding prey to eat.
4. The people that are embracing treehugging ethos and want the LF left alone, need to realize this means we would get a massive increase in Lionfish, and that a huge number of native species of fish will be wiped out throughout Florida and the Caribean.
5. Classic Predator Prey relationships like this do NOT typically involve Gazelles learning how to fight lions effectively, or of deer figuring out how to ambush wolves....the prey will not have time to evolve a response, because it did not "evolve" with the predator in question...
6. The lionfish may have a evolutionary head start on the prey in florida of over a million years. Nature has only one solution for this....The reefs in this hemisphere will change, maybe forever, PARTICULARLY if we allow the classic predator/ prey scenario to play out---meaning to the complete exponential growth of the predator, culminating with a Lionfish die off as the prey are wiped out.
7. The ecosystem on the reefs would NEVER be the same again, after this. there would be many missing species, and the volume of life might never return.

 

[jupitermermaid]

I just tend to think that man is much more destructive to ecosystems than just about any other species and if people want the fish and reefs to be healthy then they need to have places where the fish are not hunted or disturbed and then they will do just fine.

I agree with you on this statement. If PEOPLE hadn't introduced the invasive lionfish to Florida and the Bahama's they would not be here and we wouldn't have the problem we are having now. Lionfish HAVE a place where they are not hunted or disturbed.......the Indo Pacific, where they belong!

 

[Guba]

DanV
Not meaning to sound like a pessimist, but the truth very well may be that the changes you are describing could occur (and even be likely) even with the full weight of man's attempts to correct the problem. The simple truth is that we simply do not have the means to selectively harvest lionfish in an efficient manner. Sure, we can spear many of them out of favorite dive sites, but that is only an unbelieveably tiny fraction of the affected ecosystems. We simply can't go deep enough or cover enough real estate to affect anything approaching control. Breeding aggragations have been found below 300 feet (ROV documented), and let's face it...we don't even dive much of the reefs due to accessibility problems.

Simply put, man won't be the answer to this situation...at least not in the predator role. In my opinion (for what it's worth--which is not much, granted) the answer lies in another direction, such as conservation of other mid-level predators and MPA's, which give some species relief and habitat to rebound from man's predation upon them (as already noted).

 

[danvolker]

DanV
Not meaning to sound like a pessimist, but the truth very well may be that the changes you are describing could occur (and even be likely) even with the full weight of man's attempts to correct the problem. The simple truth is that we simply do not have the means to selectively harvest lionfish in an efficient manner. Sure, we can spear many of them out of favorite dive sites, but that is only an unbelieveably tiny fraction of the affected ecosystems. We simply can't go deep enough or cover enough real estate to affect anything approaching control. Breeding aggragations have been found below 300 feet (ROV documented), and let's face it...we don't even dive much of the reefs due to accessibility problems.

Simply put, man won't be the answer to this situation...at least not in the predator role. In my opinion (for what it's worth--which is not much, granted) the answer lies in another direction, such as conservation of other mid-level predators and MPA's, which give some species relief and habitat to rebound from man's predation upon them (as already noted).

Guba,
We will be doing research runs on the 220 and 270 foot reefs in the next few months on scooters. We will document the lionfish populations along them. Even if we see large concentrations of lionfish on the deeper reefs, there is a Fisheries Management concept that is appropriate here.....If we create zones of "healthy non-lionfish invaded shallow reefs", this will create re-charge zones where many of the reef fish speices can remain in successful breeding populations, even with decimation occurring on the deeper reefs.

On the deep reefs, because they are full of larger marine life, there may be more chance of the lionfish becoming prey--at least over a near future. Goliath Grouper live long lifespans, and could learn to eat and enjoy Lionfish on the deep reefs...As could Warsaw Groupers, and several other quite large marine animals.

On the shallow reefs, MAN has decimated/removed the massive numbers of big groupers that used to be plentiful on the 30 to 60 foot reefs. These same reef lines also had exponentially more large sharks on them at all times, even as little as 30 years ago ( I was diving Palm beach as early as late 70's). These larger predators would have had an entirely different effect on the equation if a few thousand lionfish were suddenly released on Palm Beach reefs back in the early 70's....the lionfish would have begun eating the food of the 20 to 80 pound grey groupers and big Nassau's all over the reef then ( as well as Jewfish), and as the typical prey would have become scarce for the huge population of groupers, they would have been forced to shift to eating lionfish. They would be competing with each other, to eat lionfish.....This is how a healthy marine system would have been safer.....we can hope the deep reefs are "more" like this, but the reality is, the density of big life at 220 and deeper does not come close to the massive volume of marine life that flourished on the reefs back in the 60's and 70's... Let's just hope it is "enough".

 

[ccxx]

they are devouring the native species and have no predators in the Atlantic.
In the south Pacific, the sharks and eels eat them.....since we can't possibly kill all lionfish in the Caribbean, maybe we can teach the sharks and eels to eat them. Lionfish need a predator in order to maintain the balance.

 

[b-dog]

I think the smaller fish will just evolve to escape the lionfish more than I think predators will eat them and control their numbers. There are some fish in the Caribbean that have been able to evade the lionfish and they will be the ones that reproduce and their young will tend to have the traits of their parents. I imagine there will be a slight change in the fish populations from before there were lionfish to after lionfish have lived among them. Evolution will happen rather quickly because fish produce huge numbers of offspring and most are selected out even without lionfish. I think that when lionfish first come to a reef most of the fish who have never lived with them will be helpless against them but there will be some that will able to evade the lionfish and they will reproduce and their young will have those traits that allowed their parents to survive. So in a relatively short period of time the fish populations will have traits that help them avoid being eaten by lionfish.

 

[danvolker]

I think the smaller fish will just evolve to escape the lionfish more than I think predators will eat them and control their numbers. There are some fish in the Caribbean that have been able to evade the lionfish and they will be the ones that reproduce and their young will tend to have the traits of their parents. I imagine there will be a slight change in the fish populations from before there were lionfish to after lionfish have lived among them. Evolution will happen rather quickly because fish produce huge numbers of offspring and most are selected out even without lionfish. I think that when lionfish first come to a reef most of the fish who have never lived with them will be helpless against them but there will be some that will able to evade the lionfish and they will reproduce and their young will have those traits that allowed their parents to survive. So in a relatively short period of time the fish populations will have traits that help them avoid being eaten by lionfish.

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