Lionfish Awareness and Elimination

[Centrals]

Lionfish is never an issue in this part of the world. So its population is being regulated by nature.
Anyone know its natural predator? I am NOT suggesting that you should import them, you will create another problem eg. cane toad in OZ.

 

[Centrals]

The ocean sunfish (theat big on that looks like a big head with no body) is its natural predator in the Indian and Pacific oceans; none in the Atlantic.

Are you sure?
The mature Oceanic Sunfish is NOT a reef fish while LF is.

 

[AnotherNewguy]

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.

Rabbits breed so often that they've become a cliche. If evolution happened as you described it, don't you think they'd be capable of SOMETHING defensively more capable than running in circles? Fruit flies would be running the world, rabbits would run the ministry of defense, and catfish would be dangling fishing poles out of the water to catch humans.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

Where is the Hitler of the fish world when you need it? Or are we playing that role?

 

[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.

B-dog,
Just where did you learn about evolution, or about it being a process that will occur in much less than several thousand years?
Extinction events can happen in the relatively short period of time you are discussing, but not evolution.

 

[Hank49]

What color is the sky in your world ?

Whether or not it's evolution, there are quick responses by native animals to invasive species.
When the toad, bufo marina, (I think that's the spelling) was introduced to Australia a lot of snakes were dying after eating them due to the toxins on the skin of the toad. Everyone thought the snake populations wouldbe wiped out but the snakes learned and stopped eating toads.
Some fish aren't that smart, like hogfish, nassau grouper and a few others, but many fish learn very fast as to what is a predator. Perhaps the schools of small fish will learn to run and hide at the site of an approaching lionfish, just as schools of dog, cubera and mutton snapper run from me after shooting one.
This will change the balance of fish on the reef but the total biomass of fish per meter squared may remain the same. Just different dominant species.
The video from the Bahamas is very encouraging. That was "ground zero" for the introduction of Lionfish and the fish seem to be hanging in there.

 

[danvolker]

Whether or not it's evolution, there are quick responses by native animals to invasive species.
When the toad, bufo marina, (I think that's the spelling) was introduced to Australia a lot of snakes were dying after eating them due to the toxins on the skin of the toad. Everyone thought the snake populations wouldbe wiped out but the snakes learned and stopped eating toads.
Some fish aren't that smart, like hogfish, nassau grouper and a few others, but many fish learn very fast as to what is a predator. Perhaps the schools of small fish will learn to run and hide at the site of an approaching lionfish, just as schools of dog, cubera and mutton snapper run from me after shooting one.
This will change the balance of fish on the reef but the total biomass of fish per meter squared may remain the same. Just different dominant species.
The video from the Bahamas is very encouraging. That was "ground zero" for the introduction of Lionfish and the fish seem to be hanging in there.

What I am going for, in this discussion, is that Lionfish are here because of Man....they did not get to Belize or Florida naturally. When "man" almost destroys a population of fish like the jewfish, Man had to step in and PUT AN END to "man's" killing of jewfish...And, it is working nicely

Man caused the Nasau grouper to become functionally extinct in Florida waters, the nasaus never "learned' to avoid spearfishing human divers.

Grey Grouper became functionally extinct as a dominant predator on the reefs off of Florida, due to enormous fishing pressure over several decades, where fisherman concentrated their efforts durring the migration of these fish, and suddenly there were no migrating greys any more, and none reproducing. They never learned not to congregate, and they never had a chance for evolutionary mutations to throw off some grey groupers that wanted to migrate at times other than the first cold snap. Evolution just does not work this fast.

We put the lion fish here. Now they are eating many species that sleep or are inactive and are in exactly the place the lionfish are going to be hunting for them and eating them. Others that are just swimming around, evolved the instincts to "know" what marine life forms are a threat to them....this set of instincts and behaviors took hundreds of thousands of years , if not millions, for them to "co-evolve" with all the potential predators. Both were evolving ways of dealing with each other, the entire time....but most changes are over evolutionary time--which is more like geologic time.....this has no relationship to the lifespan of a human, which is not even a second in geologic time.
We look at fish like hogsnappers...they just don't see humans as a threat...unfortunately for them, they taste really good to us, so they are nearing a non-reproductive population base from commercial spearfishing of them, on many south flordia reefs. They won't learn, they wont have time to evolve.

The lionfish are acting like a huge commercial fishing fleet.
Nothing is stopping them.
The fish they are targeting will not have time to evolve a new behavior that could protect them...
...Maybe in 10,000 years a few species could, but something would have to keep the lionfish populations from growing exponentially [during this span of time] for this to have any possibility....

...Right now, imagine our present commercial fishing fleets, doubling their size and the harvest they take, every 6 months..

...How long before the massively increased fishing pressure wipes out most of the marine life on our reefs?

This is why WE need to shoot and kill every lionfish we see...each is like a member of an exponentially growing commercial fishing fleet, fishing in waters facing a fishery collapse, and as such, each offender needs to be taken down. Evolution will not save these fish populations being decimated. Only Man can stop or slow what Man has initiated here.

 

[Hank49]

What I am going for, in this discussion, is that Lionfish are here because of Man....they did not get to Belize or Florida naturally. When "man" almost destroys a population of fish like the jewfish, Man had to step in and PUT AN END to "man's" killing of jewfish...And, it is working nicely


The lionfish are acting like a huge commercial fishing fleet.
Nothing is stopping them.
The fish they are targeting will not have time to evolve a new behavior that could protect them...
...Maybe in 10,000 years a few species could, but something would have to keep the lionfish populations from growing exponentially [during this span of time] for this to have any possibility....

...Right now, imagine our present commercial fishing fleets, doubling their size and the harvest they take, every 6 months..

...How long before the massively increased fishing pressure wipes out most of the marine life on our reefs?

]

They're not exactly like a fishing fleet because they're not preying on the breeding population. The do put a dent in the larval population however.
Think about this though. Every year, thousands of snappers gather and spawn here in Gladden Spit. And every year, huge whale sharks come and ingest tons of eggs and sperm as they are released into the water. And yet, every year, the snappers are there in huge numbers again.
Fish spawn in huge numbers (and most crustaceans also) for that reason. Predation.
Dan, I just like discussing this. I know you're very concerned and I really appreciate that attitude. Humans are the worst offender in this whole issue but I have more faith in nature than you seem to. And we'll get to see who was right in the long run. There are areas where the fish are being aggressively hunted and there are areas where they are pretty much breeding unmolested. (here, unfortunately). I'm betting on nature adapting to them though.

 

[b-dog]

I think that the fish will adapt to the lionfish because fish produce huge numbers of young. Some of the young may be more wary and they will be more likely to survive and produce more wary young themselves. Lionfish are an ambush predator that the fish in the Indo-Pacific have been able to adapt to so the fish in the Caribbean will likely adapt to as well, maybe by just being slightly better able to recognize danger.There are maybe 10 times as many species in the Indo-Pacific than in the Caribbean so I feel that the fish there will not go extinct. My opinion is that nature will find a way because it will have to because man can not solve this problem.

 

[Guba]

Let me point out that "evolution" as it is being used in this context is quite different than the biological usage. Biologically, evolutionary change is more structural...developing physiological structures and biochemical changes that enable an organism to adapt to its environment. These changes, of course, take many generations and usually quite a bit of time, as noted. Recognizing potential predators/dangers is an "adaptive response" or learned behavior. These changes can take place far, far quicker than evolutionary (structural) ones.

As for fish learning to respond differently to predator pressure, even the lionfish itself is showing signs of doing the same thing. On a recent trip to the Bahamas, it was suggested by divers who frequent the reefs there that lionfish themselves were becoming more wary. They were found in the open less often, yet it was granted that they were still on the reefs in significant numbers, since they were often found seemingly hiding. The hypothesis put forth was that they had been hunted enough by divers to make them wary when divers descended on the reef, only to re-emerge when the divers left.

Again, it's an intriguing hypothesis, yet it cannot be verified without addtional study, such as putting out autonomous recording devices to document lionfish activity with and without divers on the reef.