I just tried googling the Panther Grouper...little more than this comes up
Reef Protection International - Reef Fish Guide ( most sites just show name and that it is an invasive species).
So here we are, in a universe where massive depopulations of species have been allowed by marine fishery managers, and the fish populations we see today are NOTHING like what they were in the 60's and 70's....From the old timers, I know that their used to be large populations of Jewfish right up to beyond the BHB, and in the 70's when I first began diving the inlet, there was more biomass of grouper in the inlet at any given minute, than all the fish together at the BHB today.
So why the big rush to remove a species that is potentially going to fill in some of the damage that commercial fishing has done to our area? We need species to fill in the ecosystem where species used to exist, but no longer do.
Why should we ASSUME that the agencies involved know the real benefit or threat involved with the Panther Grouper? If they do, I'd like to know this risk and everything about it soon. If they force some of us to do our own research--to contact professors at universities we know, this has the potential to create a nasty fallout if the opinions on the threat levels are significantly different.
This is common sense. No one can just blindly accept the destruction/removal behavior without good explanations and at least some science or logic behind it....Just because a fish is labled an invasive species, is NOT a good reason, particularly when the species that were supposed to be present have been long since wiped out, and there is no reasonable chance or them returning.