Lionfish Awareness Workshops in West Florida NEXT WEEK!

LIONFISH AWARENESS WORKSHOPS ON THE WEST COAST OF FLORIDA

These workshop presentations will cover the history and progression of the invasion, an overview of lionfish biology and ecology, current research and impacts, safe handling and collection techniques, and more. This workshop series is funded by US Fish and Wildlife Service, and organized by REEF and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).

Fort Myers, FL
When: Tuesday, October 11th 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Where: Eco Living Center at Rutenberg Park, 6490 South Pointe Blvd, Fort Myers, FL 33919

St Petersburg, FL
When: Wednesday, October 12th 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Where: Karen A. Steidinger Auditorium (KAS) Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, USF‐St. Petersburg, 100 Eighth Ave. S.E., St. Petersburg, FL 33701

Destin, FL
When: Friday, October 14th 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Where: Destin Community Center, 101 Stahlman Avenue, Destin, FL 32541

The workshops are free and open to the public.

Click here to register for a West Coast FL lionfish workshop!

I don't want to sound like a nicknameforRichardthatstartswiththeletter"D"and endswith"k", but this is the same US Fish & Wildlife Service that raided the Gibson guitar factory in Nashville looking for illegally imported ebony wood from India that the Indian government had no problems with, effectively closing it down, that we pay taxpayer dollars for and now we're paying taxpayer dollars so people can learn how not to get stung by lionfishes?
I know that everyone means well, but people that do this stuff in the private sector are either called "unemployed" or "bankrupt".
Yeah, I know that it's free.

Hi Tom,

None of your tax money is going into this. REEF is a non-profit marine conservation organization that runs on donations and grants. Our main project in fact is the REEF Volunteer Fish Survey. We encourage divers and other marine enthusiasts to conduct simple fish surveys across the US, Canada, and the Caribbean to quantify fish population and distribution. To date, over 110,000 have been submitted to our database, and over 55 papers have been published using that data. We also do lionfish derbies (for example our next one in Key West on November 5) and lionfish workshops to inform the community on the lionfish invasion and what they can do to help.

The workshops are completely free and open to the public. Our hope is to educate the public on the lionfish invasion and encourage control of the population, that's all.