Bit of a tangent, but from the article - "“What’s happening is a few bad players are swimming around with spears but without their containment device,” he said. “When they do come across a lionfish, they’re able to take it. But when they do take it, they don’t have a place to put it, so they swim around and try to find something to feed it to. … The problem comes when responsible cullers like Paul are out culling and they put the fish in a bucket. The nurse shark swims up and they want the fish. You don’t have the ability to feed it the lionfish. You’re trying to do the right thing and take them to the surface responsibly.”"
So, Cayman reg.s require lion fish cullers to stick their kill in a container and take it with them. That follow up paragraph I quoted only lays out 2 options, though; stick it in a container, or fin around and find something to directly feed it too. There's a 3rd option I don't see mentioned - kill the lion fish, push it off your spear, and fin off, leaving the dead fish on the bottom for whatever, without directly feeding it to anything.
I take it that would be illegal in the Caymans, too. I mention it because the issue of lion fish culling potentially conditioning predators (mainly reef sharks and moray eels) in a way that theoretically might endanger humans is much broader than the Caymans. I wonder what impact 'kill and leave' has?
And for the lion fish culler, what added risk hauling a container packed with fluid-leaking lion fish leaving a scent trail for predators?
Seasoned professional divers such as dive shop staff who might cull lion fish are one thing, but some recreational divers in some other places spear lion fish, too. Just wondering what the relative risks are for the individual diver.