On Roatan and Utila, the lionfish are kept in check on the common dive sites. The unvisited areas in, around, and beneath these common dive sites hold a fair amount of lionfish. Even less visited locations, like in the East end of the island hold many times more per given area.
Even if every diver in the world hunted lionfish, we could never make a dent in the overall invasive lionfish population in the invaded areas of the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Caribbean (GAC).
Given the fact that the vast majority of all divers only hunt in depths between 20-130 ft and lionfish live, thrive, and breed in depths from maybe a foot down to at least 1,000 ft, it's pretty easy to see how humans implementing divers with spears is pretty useless on a large scale. They work great on a local scale. A single hunter can maintain a length of reef several hundred yards long if hunted on a regular basis, say once or twice a week and it only takes a moderate reduction in lionfish numbers to allow the reef to rebound significantly over less than a year.
The best answer to the large scale problem is to develop lionfish specific traps and commercialize the meat, which is what we're starting to do here in Honduras with Roatan Lionfish Company. Traps are the single best way to decimate a species of fish, bar none. It's why they outlaw them for use with most commercial fish.
Roatan Lionfish Company has exclusive permission from DIGEPESCA in Honduras to develop a lionfish specific trap and commercialize lionfish from all Honduran waters.
If you have a commercial trapping boat and want to come trap lionfish with us in Honduras, drop me a line on the Roatan Lionfish Company's Facebook page. We're always looking for contractors.
