Rickg
Contributor
Concur. Why not just use Hawaiian slings to shot/kill them and just leave them behind vice trying to catch them with a bag. Something is bound to eat their carcasses.
Lionfish/DM's don't care!
- Thread starter alohagal
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Pelagicsal
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Rickg
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You won't have to wait very long before they are large enough to make good targets.
Pelagicsal
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Not waiting. Getting them off the reef now.
Time to sunscreen to go at them again today.
Time to sunscreen to go at them again today.
AquaExplorer
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I know this may be opening Pandora's box here...but what about introducing its natural predator to the area? Seriously...everything I have heard about this damn fish is that it is incredibly invasive, very deadly to local fish populations, breeds like a cockroach, and has NO natural predators here.
We have to deal with it one way or another, since we somehow brought this scourge here, why not bring over something that can EAT IT.
We have to deal with it one way or another, since we somehow brought this scourge here, why not bring over something that can EAT IT.
It has been suggested several times in this thread, and it is a very bad idea. If you bring in a new predator to eat the lionfish, what else would they eat? Do you expect them to only eat lionfish and then nicely off themselves after all the lionfish are gone? You would have to find a predator that only eats lionfish and would starve to death rather than eat anything else, otherwise you'd just be replacing one problem with a worse one. Any predator that is bad@$$ enough to eat lionfish is probably going to be a problem for everyone else as well; it would be sort of like hiring the Mafia to protect your business from street hoods.
OP
alohagal
Contributor
For a look at the progress of lionfish distribution since 1992, see the animated map by the US Geological Survey at
http://nas.er.usgs.gov/taxgroup/fish...hanimation.gif It's a progressive animation up to 2009.
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http://nas.er.usgs.gov/taxgroup/fish...hanimation.gif It's a progressive animation up to 2009.
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MSilvia
Contributor
It doesn't. I spear fish myself for food, and as a student of environmental science, I appreciate the value of culling as a means of population management.
So long as locals are willing to be vigilant protectors of their reefs in perpetuity (which is a VERY long time), I see no reason that spearing or capturing lionfish wouldn't be a somewhat effective means of protecting individual reefs or marine parks.
What I take issue with is the notion that there's a chance in hell people are going to be able to "undo" the introduction of lionfish to the Atlantic and Caribbean. I don't believe they can be exterminated, but so long as people keep actively policing specific areas, I'm more than happy to concede the possibility of maintaining lionfish-free (or at least low lionfish population density) zones, at least until there isn't adequate interest in working to maintain them.
MSilvia
Contributor
So long as a significant population can thrive away from the areas with active population control measures, and so long as ocean currents continue to circulate, the work of controlling their populations around the reefs will NEVER EVER be completed. You could kill every lionfish on every reef in the Atlantic and Caribbean for the next 200 years, and then take a year off, and you'd find lionfish all over those reefs the following year. In other words, I hope everyone is prepared to keep up a fight that can't be won.
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