Lionfish...Okay this is funny

[String]

You can have great fun on a night dive with lionfish as they follow your torch beam, you can move the beam and "remote control" the lionfish.
Can also shine the beam onto various size fish to see what size they go for and which they seem to prefer. Great entertainment for the entire dive feeding them.

 

[bleeb]

They have no natural predators of which I am aware... balance is the key to their "natural" populations.

IIRC, recent research found that Caribbean lionfish had much lower incidences of the diseases or parasites found in their normal ranges, and this was believed to be one of the reasons that they averaged larger and possibly matured earlier in the Western Atlantic as compared to their traditional Indo-Pacific area.

I'll post it if I see the reference again.

 

[Guba]

Wait! I've got it! The perfect solution to the lionfish invasion...

All we have to do is spread the rumor that lionfish meat is an extremely powerful aphrodesiac. Make a few trips to Japanese restaurants and request "lionfish soup", and explain why. Before you know it, those little suckers will be disappearing off the reefs faster than Chex mix at a Christmas party!

Hey, 100 million sharks can attest that this could work!

 

[DA Aquamaster]

That is a brilliant way to create a market for them. Advertise to the little head, not the big one.

To make it even more effective put a bag limit of one per day in place, which will increase the perceived value and ensure people take as many as they can catch/shoot.

 

[Jayde323]

That is a brilliant way to create a market for them. Advertise to the little head, not the big one.

Too funny! I needed a good laugh today....

 

[Lobstah Slayah]

That is a brilliant way to create a market for them. Advertise to the little head, not the big one.

To make it even more effective put a bag limit of one per day in place, which will increase the perceived value and ensure people take as many as they can catch/shoot.

Funny, true and funny!

 

[S. starfish]

That is a brilliant way to create a market for them. Advertise to the little head, not the big one.

To make it even more effective put a bag limit of one per day in place, which will increase the perceived value and ensure people take as many as they can catch/shoot.

Spreading rumors that the bag limit is temporary and that at some point in the near future there may be a ban on catching lion fish would probably help as well.

 

[Hank49]

As it has been explained to me the problem with Lionfish in the Atlantic is as follows:

1) They have no natural predators in the Atlantic
2) They eat all the little reef fish (e.g. the babies)
3) If they get in the island Mangroves (where all the reef fish babies hide) all the reef fish on the Atlantic reefs will be gone in something like 20 years

The scientists I've talked to tell me this is a slow motion ecological disaster. Is there some hyperbole here? Maybe, but I don't know enough to tell.

I had a lionfish in my aquarium in the Philippines a few years back. I had to feed him post larval tiger shrimp from our hatchery because he wasn't taking to the flakes and wasn't catching and eating the other fish either. The shrimp were a bit dazed and weak when I fed them so he could easily catch them. that's all I saw him eat and my fish population didn't drop. He was only about 2 inches long when I got him and grew to about 3 1/2. He still wasn't catching damsels and seargents that I had in there.
I question their ability to invade mangroves. One, the salinity may be too low and two, their feather like fins don't make them suitable for fitting in tight places and catching small fish that can hide in the mangrove roots.

 

[divengolf]

Lionfish soup- a great idea!!

But this is a real problem that getting worse by the day. I just got back from an AquaCat trip to the Exumas and Eleuthera. I did the same trip a couple years ago. The decrease in reef fish was obvious on almost every dive. No more big schools of grunts and significantly fewer small and middle sized reef fish of all kinds.

Also the reef shark population appeared to be down by maybe half.

The only fish that was increasing was lionfish. Two years ago we might see one a dive, maybe. Now if 5-10 per dive consistently.

Get there before all the pretty fish are gone.

As for me, I'll pass on most of the Carribean until something is done about lionfish, if anything can be done. Not much left to take pictures of.

 

[Guba]

An analysis of caught lionfish stomachs showed that they pretty much eat anything that will fit in their mouths...larval forms, juvenile fish, adult small species...pretty much you-name-it. I don't have the link to the survey I saw, but I'll see if I can find it.