Lionfish problem SOLVED

[TXreefer]

I wish they would start it now. I'm going in June and would love to cook up some fresh lionfish.

 

[RTBDiver]

I get the joke in regard to Asians and wiping them out for aphrodisiac claims.

However, in seriousness, I don't think the locals are the answer, at least not to the dive sites. Just letting visiting divers wack them is all they need to do to cull the dive sites.

I have no idea how you tied asians into this?
But maybe more serious than the aphrodisiac thing I would bet if the RMP got a little trailer and stopped at the cruise ports selling "exotic" fish sandwiches they could do well, Add to that they pay a fair price per pound for them, I assure you, the locals would be out there getting them , Heck, the Hondurans supplied Red Lobster for a long time

 

[Mike]

RE : asians - I've read it a bunch of times here and elsewhere in regard to the lion fish problem, the running joke is get the Asians convinced that the lion fish or some part of them is an aphrodisiac and they will harvest them to extinction. IE shark fins, rhino horns, tiger penis... etc....

 

[RTBDiver]

I was thinking a little closer to home as Iguana eggs are considered by many to be somewhat of a natural Viagra and look how well they keep the Iguana in control

 

[Magnolia3]

Pat, Another theory is that they came in the ballast tanks of large freighters which is every bit as plausible. All we can really hope for is that they develop natural predators like they have in the southern oceans.

Exactly the way we got the green mussel invasion here in TampaBay. I pried sheets of them off a sailboat last weekend.. they are here to stay both of them.
Perhaps breeding is cyclical and sometimes of the yr they breed more often than others???

. Just letting visiting divers wack them is all they need to do to cull the dive sites.

What about other places.. so they breed like mad elsewhere and swim in. It sounds like an unending culling scenario. Somehow the nondives sites also need to be culled as much as can be possible for them. YMMV
'bella

 

[DandyDon]

What about other places.. so they breed like mad elsewhere and swim in. It sounds like an unending culling scenario. Somehow the nondives sites also need to be culled as much as can be possible for them. YMMV
'bella

I'm sure culling the resident population helps, I'm all for it really and hope the hunters don't abuse it, but the eggs, larvae and/or fry ride the gye (stream) as it circles the Caribbean. There will always be a supply as the native fish won't hunt them alive.

 

[Hank49]

I think Lionfish are here to stay. From everything I have read, the Lionfish was released in Miami from private aquariums. Some think the release was intentional (large pets that had gotten too big for the tank) or accidental (washed into the canals during Hurricane Andrew). Be that as it may, the founding population of Lionfish was probably under 20 individuals.

I was told by John E Randall that he and many ichthyologists believe the lionfish escaped from a large display aquarium in the Bahamas. They apparently pumped in raw seawater and discharged it with no filtration. Millions of eggs or juveniles could have been released. (this one?) Bahamas Marine Habitats and Aquariums | Atlantis Paradise Island Resort

 

[Mike]

What about other places.. so they breed like mad elsewhere and swim in. It sounds like an unending culling scenario. Somehow the nondives sites also need to be culled as much as can be possible for them. YMMV
'bella

You're right. Right now it is not a solution to the overall problem, only a way to manage the dive sites.

 

[salth2owannabe]

I paid good money a few years ago down there to do the shark dive (which I enjoyed). I'd have paid a little extra for the week for equipment rental and a few seperate dives to go hunt down a few of these critters, sounds like fun! Part of the fee could go to the marine park and the resort could make a few extra bucks. I can't be the only one out there that would jump at the chance to go skewer a few of these. There ya go resorts, another way to make some $$.
Unfortunately the Lion fish are there to stay, but no reason not to try to control numbers the best we can.

 

[b-dog]

I'm out on the reef every week here and I'm seeing a few, but big ones. Not the multitude of small ones that I expected. And the other fish populations seem to be the same.
Hunting them isn't a bad thing but what about the deep ones, or the ones in places where no one dives. I would guess less than 20% of the length of Belize's reefs are dived at all. much less with any regularity.

I wonder if hunting the big lionfish might be counterproductive. The bigger lionfish eat the smaller ones and maybe the bigger ones control the populstion of the smaller ones. If there are a bunch of small lionfish growing up then I would imagine that they would eat a lot more than a big one because growing fish eat a lot of food. At least this is my experience with aquariums that the adult fish are not nearly as hungry as the juvenile ones. I would think a big lionfish would find the slow moving baby ones easy prey compared to the other faster fish.