Dan wants to protect divers from the dangers of Lionfish

[EastEndDiver]

See the article in the Cayman 27 News:

Cayman first in global campaign - Cayman 27

 

[Misty89]

Lol, from what I've seen over the past couple of years, I think that DAN should distribute recipe cards. Lionfish...yum!

 

[Hank49]

If they're going down that road, why only lionfish?
What about blue ring octopus? Cone shells? Man o wars? sea snakes? OTHER scorpanidaes? fire coral?
Like, Indo Pacific residents and divers there need to know about lionfish all of a sudden?
I don't understand this line of thinking.

 

[Deac in the Wake]

If DAN wants to protect divers from lionfish, they need to get behind supporting divers culling them on any dive. The best defense is a good offense. I dive Cayman at least once a year and while my last trip to Little Cayman was very good in terms of number of lionfish seen (approximately 6 in 6 days), other locales seem to be twiddling their thumbs, debating about what to do while the LFs are out there taking over their reefs. Had I been allowed to take my LF spear on those dives, I alone would've culled all 6 of those. Rec diving and spearing LFs are not exclusive concepts.

I get DAN's point in wanting to educate divers about the dangers but again, if you remove the non-indigenous species in the first place, you can mitigate the risk.

 

[nfarrar]

FYI the culling must be helping. We just got back from 6 days of diving on the North end and West bay. We say a total of 3 the whole trip and it was not for lack of looking. We did 2 tank AM dives at named sites. Then I did a few early AM and afternoon shore dives daily from West bay. I saw the DAN Lionfish cards at the dive ops! I grabbed a few for novelty.

Later Mon,
Nick

 

[SAPIUS]

The more divers participating in culling Lion Fish the more probability of diver injury...I am a total supporter of the Lion Fish culling program at the Cayman Islands, but with that said I have also seen more divers 'accidently' hit due to such things as having capture bags too thin or too close to the diver who is hauling the 'catch' during the hunting process. Unlike nfarrar I have seen upwards of 25 Lion Fish in the first stages of dives and really all depends where you are diving. I am glad Cayman Island DOE is allowing DMs who do NOT work on the islands to get a Lion Fish culling license (after appropriate certs and police checks)...Bubbleblocker just got hers on our last trip last month. Not to bring up the debate over wear or non-wear glove discussions I do wish CI DOE would allow wearing of amour gloves during Lion Fish hunts.

Ellen and I are down almost every month to our place on East End and sometimes we dive sites where we see little presence of Lion Fish and unfortnately we are on sites where we stop counting at 20 or 25 of the buggers. Now if we could just get those groupers and snappers to hunt and eat Lion Fish on their own then we will have a great weapon in our arsenal to control the Lion Fish presence. Nature needs to be the deciding factor in the balance of invasives vs natural occuring sea critters.

 

[EastEndDiver]

Sapius ,Bradley Johnson the research officer at Cayman DOE sent me a list of recommended gloves to wear when culling Lion Fish.He sent me the info when I got my license ,I would check with him about your concern of no gloves.I am wondering why he would send me the info if it is still a no no......somehwat confusing.

In reference to Groupers being trained.....we had one act as a "pointer" for us on one dive,he literally led the way and pointed every Lion Fish out for us then he waited patiently.It was very funny ,now all they need to do is take the next step and take them.I think I have some video of his actions.

 

[Nylorac]

This is why

If they're going down that road, why only lionfish?
What about blue ring octopus? Cone shells? Man o wars? sea snakes? OTHER scorpanidaes? fire coral?
Like, Indo Pacific residents and divers there need to know about lionfish all of a sudden?
I don't understand this line of thinking.

Pic from my last trip. They don't belong in the Caribbean and they are eating everything they can with no predators there - very happy they are tasty!

 

[Misty89]

In reference to Groupers being trained.....we had one act as a "pointer" for us on one dive,he literally led the way and pointed every Lion Fish out for us then he waited patiently.It was very funny ,now all they need to do is take the next step and take them.I think I have some video of his actions.

Lol, the nurse sharks in Belize (San Pedro) do that, too! I'm also waiting for them to make that leap and eat them on their own.

 

[b-dog]

Lol, the nurse sharks in Belize (San Pedro) do that, too! I'm also waiting for them to make that leap and eat them on their own.

My guess for the future of what will happen is that the fish will evolve to avoid them instead of lionfish gaining a predator. When lionfish invaded the Caribbean, they ate tons of fish that were unaware of the danger. There were some who survived and passed on their genes that allowed them to survive to the next generation and those that survived of that generation passed on their genes and so on. This kind of evolution takes place rather quickly because if it didn't then no coral reef fish would ever survive. Think about the islands in the Indo-pacific, they are isolated and the fish species in those islands must adapt to new species being dispersed through ocean currents or hiding in flotsam and so on as they make their way to an isolated island. Well, at first the new fish might have a big advantage over the locals but fish seem to adapt quickly due to the huge numbers of of babies they produce. The reason that they have so many babies is because so many of the others die before becoming able to breed. With so many babies, there is huge genetic potential to have a few with the right combination to adapt to a new environment or predator.