Lionfish invade Florida Keys

I looked around and all I came across was this thread, which has some great information about invading creatures. It's short but good.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I've had a few fresh water tanks but never delved into salt. Always wanted one of these beautiful creatures but I was afraid I'd get poked by their spines and have to go to the hospital, which doesn't sound like a good day to me.

So these guys are taking over. I'm not surprised. They are tough.

“ ‘Explosive’ is a good word. And you can add ‘invasive’,” says Hixon as we sip Bahamian beers at the Perry Institute for Marine Science on Great Exuma’s Lee Stocking Island. Ten years ago, sightings of lionfish, which generally reach a size of 30-35cm, in Atlantic waters were rare. These maroon-striped beauties, which hide an arsenal of venomous, needle-sharp spines among their feathery, translucent fins, are native to the Pacific and Indian oceans, some 16,000km away from the Caribbean.

They’ve been spotted as far north as Massachusetts and as far south as Mexico and Panama. “No fish has ever colonised so quickly and over such a vast ocean range before,” says Paula Whitfield, a research ecologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin­istration. Scientists have discovered that their fertilised eggs “hitch a ride” on the Gulf Stream. While the scientific data is not in yet, some Caribbean fishermen are already reporting that lionfish are affecting their catch of commercial fish such as grouper and snapper. Hixon and his team watched one lionfish eat more than 20 small fish in 30 minutes.

Voracious! I guess I'm glad I never had one of these as they would have eaten everything else.

``I think a lot of people underestimate what the problem can be,'' Kehoe said. ``I'm amazed. They are like the perfect eating machine. They eat until they are about to explode.''

The lionfish reached the Florida Keys a year ago. Its arrival was expected, with scientists calling it the completion of a circle that began a generation earlier when the first lionfish was spotted off the coast of Miami in 1985 and more were reported there in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew. Most believe the original invaders came from aquariums.

Since then, the prolific breeder has conquered most of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cuba and the Turks and Caicos. Its path has followed that of the Gulf Stream and other currents, which carry their eggs and larvae.

During the past year, the lionfish has slowly but surely spread throughout the Keys, as scientists expected and feared, with more than 80 of the intruders documented from Key Largo to the Dry Tortugas. So far, all have been juveniles, with the biggest about 10 inches long. They can grow to 18 inches or more.

How to kill them? Seems it's not easy.

"Wow! Just so clean," Sikkel exclaims. "There's nothing in there. Have a look. A local fish, you'd see a bunch of really small worms on those red gill filaments. And they squirm, so it's easy to pick them out. But there's nothing on there."

The parasites that would be swarming over a local fish aren't going near the lionfish. Sikkel says that might be one secret to the invasion.

If you can catch them they are edible and considered a delicacy in some places. I doubt this will take care of the problem as I don't know how many people are out there trying to catch a poisonous fish.

Until marine predators or parasites learn to feed on lionfish, the best hope for slowing the spread may be humans. The fish are a delicacy in Asia, but not in the Bahamas, given the painful sting their spines can inflict. A few restaurants serve lionfish now, and there's an effort to teach Bahamians how to catch and cook them.

"With the quantities of lionfish that we've found in our waters and the amount of food they consume, it has the potential of really collapsing our commercially important species — our fishing industry in general," Anderson says.

But that's not all. Tourism is a $5 billion-a-year industry and accounts for half the employment in the Bahamas. Anderson worries that if the lionfish continue to devour colorful reef fish, divers will vacation elsewhere.

As the linked thread above shows, this isn't the only occasion this type of thing has happened. All kinds of animal, plant and sea creatures have been wrecking environments for years.

I would bet this is going to bite the human race in the rear sometime soon. Just my opinion but things like this can only go on for so long before the ecosystems of the earth are killed off by creatures they can't defend against.

However, since arriving in the Atlantic, they have multiplied many times over. Because the fish don’t seem to have any local predators, they are reproducing on an unheard-of scale. In the Bahamas, some scientists report finding more than 400 lionfish per hectare.

I think I'll cancel that vacation I had planned in the Bahamas.

Source: NPR

Source: Miami Herald

Source: Reader's Digest

Thanks for posting!!!


Not to make light of the damage they are causing, but Lionfish have always been my favourite too

Now if only it was easier to keep a salt water tank.
Those guys could EASILY eat all my livebearers and Tetras!

Awesome fish.

reply to post by LostNemesis


No problem. Just a little something I thought ATS would enjoy.

I used to get a lot of creatures in organic produce. Usually shipped from California to Arizona. I wonder how many critters that shouldn't have been transplanted were. I don't know if moving these insects from Cali to AZ will have harmful effects but one never knows. We got infected with wasps once, came in with the celery. Loads of fun that was having them fly all over the store.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone so shamelessly pimp a thread!

LOL! Just kidding. I saw this link on the thread to bring back old threads, and clicked on it. Must have missed it first go-round.

They are certainly attractive little things, aren't they? But good lord, the way they eat! Who knew?

(Just joking about the "pimp" comment. I've seen way worse "thread promotion" than this.) lol.

You got my Flag you deserved!

reply to post by ladyinwaiting


Guilty as charged!

For some reason I was so proud of myself when I finished this thread. Good links and not a one of them Wiki, some good info, nice pics, and no one came.

It happens, I know, but sometimes you just wanna go "WHAA", read my thread LOL!

Thanks for stopping by, hope ya learned something. I did when making this.

This one, it seems, was a accident. This one, Darwin's Nightmare, is NOT, and is even a crazier story than the lionfish.

Sorry, another shameless plug, but it's a good one.

We cannot keep on introducing these creatures into habitats that they ruin. I recently was at Lake Mead and the mussels, I think that's what they are, have taken over. All over the rocks on the beach, it's crazy. The boaters have to sterilize their boats if they take them out of water, etc. It's just a mess and it doesn't belong there. The Darwin's Nightmare scenario has so many ramifications besides the fact they put a fish into Lake Victoria that has killed most everything in the lake, social, economic, political, it's as crazy a story as there is out there, at least in my mind.