Lionfish in Cozumel
- Thread starter deborahdelamar
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
I see your point, er, points. No, I agree, a spearfishing orgy wouldn't be good either. There has to be reasonable control and directed effort at the problem without risking collateral damage to the other species. But you will not control this problem without a larger effort and one DM isn't going to accomplish much while he's also trying to serve as a guide for the rest. In the Bahamas a single dive location can, and usually does, contain dozens of lionfish. On just one dive last September we collected 56 in about 40 minutes. That's where your marine park is going to be very, very shortly. That risk to the other 99% is going to reduce those 99% substantially without a concentrated effort to control it. Properly organized, a lionfish sweep of a reef is not going to disturb the rest of the marine life even if the occasional native species gets taken. One lionfish can clean 80% of the fish off a reef in just 5 weeks and this is a fact borne out in Univ. of Idaho studies. Which would be worse?
Let me be clear, protection of the park will not, in my opinion, be a part time effort. To protect what you have you're going to have to make a dedicated effort and right now you are fortunate to have the time to figure out how to do it. I'm sure the govt. will not fund a dedicated effort to police the park, not to the extent it will require. So maybe, incorporating it into the recreational dive program in a controlled way might provide not only the protection you're going to need but also provide a way for dive operators promote their operations. It's my suggestion for the dive operators and the govt. to consider. Control of the hunters shouldn't be a big effort. Teaching someone how to use a sling is not a 3 hour college course. Then, when on a dive, you simply have the right to kill them as you find them and then leave them, nature will take care of the rest. No handling required other than to scrape them off your spear. I think it's a win-win for the operators, the govt., the park and the divers who enjoy the sport of hunting. In fact, that's a win-win-win-win to me.
One last thing. This problem is going to sweep it's way through the Gulf of Mexico and who knows how far beyond. It's going to be bad. We need to begin efforts everywhere, not just in Coz, to protect the parks and fisheries or they ain't gonna be any. Bringing in recreational divers to help control them might just be one of many ways that are going to be needed to do it.
Just a suggestion - I don't have lionfish in my pond. We have snakeheads. Same problem. Y'all come on over - bring your spears....
Last edited:
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that DMs are organizing their own hunts, going out either alone or together, in their spare time, simply for the purpose of killing these things. I know one that told me a few months ago that he would make it his personal mission statement to kill everyone of them if they ever showed up in Coz.
Harro10
Contributor
Hank49
Contributor
I fully agree with the rest of your post.
I also just saw a documentary a couple nights ago on the snakehead infestation you have. What a mess. How can you stop them once they get in a murky pond, lake or river? Apparently they're showing up randomly all over the place having been smuggled in by specialty markets for food.
At least with lionfish we can see them. They stand out on the reef and hardly even try to move away as you approach. Pretty easy to spot and kill. We'll never get them all but at least we can keep them in check. Kind of like picking up trash as you see it along the highway or on your street.
deco_martini
Contributor
The idea isn't to stop what you are doing and step on every bug you see.
Animals are constantly evolving to be better at finding food and better at escaping predators. As Dawkins put it, there is an "escalation". Zebras are always getting better at escaping lions and lions are always getting better at nabbing zebras.
Lionfish are here to stay.
However, if enough can be culled from the shallow reefs where your juvenile reef fishes are most vulnerable, then you buy time for reef fish to identify them as predators and start adapting to that presence, as well as for larger predators to figure out that the lionfish are edible.
The reef ecosystems of the caribbean are just going to have to make room for the lionfish. We just don't want the sudden collapse of local species because the Lion can be so invasive. Could you image if local Toadfish juveniles turned out to be really attractive Lionfish bait? You would have their populations wiped out before they learned to hide from Lions.
Animals are constantly evolving to be better at finding food and better at escaping predators. As Dawkins put it, there is an "escalation". Zebras are always getting better at escaping lions and lions are always getting better at nabbing zebras.
Lionfish are here to stay.
However, if enough can be culled from the shallow reefs where your juvenile reef fishes are most vulnerable, then you buy time for reef fish to identify them as predators and start adapting to that presence, as well as for larger predators to figure out that the lionfish are edible.
The reef ecosystems of the caribbean are just going to have to make room for the lionfish. We just don't want the sudden collapse of local species because the Lion can be so invasive. Could you image if local Toadfish juveniles turned out to be really attractive Lionfish bait? You would have their populations wiped out before they learned to hide from Lions.
Len
Registered
sharky60
Contributor
In the Bahamas, the scientists from the REEF project are capturing them BARE HANDED!!!!!!! YIKES!!!!
Some they are tagging and releasing for study and others they take back to the lab (those are the one's that don't make it)
I still say this is something that should be left up to trained professionals and volunteers to handle. About the first time some tourist comes off a dive boat with a hand the size of a football because they decided it was thier job to kill a lionfish, some regulations will be put into place post haste...hopefully someone with a brain cell will add rules and provisions to the park rules to cover this sort of thing.
...personally, I'd use a Hawaiian sling with a tri-prog spearhead
In the Bahamas, the scientists from the REEF project are capturing them BARE HANDED!!!!!!! YIKES!!!!
Some they are tagging and releasing for study and others they take back to the lab (those are the one's that don't make it)
...personally, I'd use a Hawaiian sling
Aw, c'mon. Maybe just a leetle bit of dynamite?
Similar threads
