Feeding Lionfish to Other Fish

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Having watched a moray approach a diver in a slightly frontal manner rather than swimming passively by, I'd rather divers not teach them to eat lionfish - especially off the spear!
 
Had a few times where large green morays swam straight up to me in Utila (no I didn't have any lion fish) - gave me a helluva surprise the first time! Got some excellent photos tho!

Leaving them as biomass sounds like the best option to me.
 
My thoughts (I am not a marine biologist, I don't play one on TV and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night) on this are that Mother Nature will find a way to sort things out.

Lionfish are voracious eaters, and unfortunately, they will likely one day be pretty much the only fish left in many areas of the reef. This will mean that the top level predators such as Morays and Groupers and the Apex Predators such as sharks and Goliath Groupers will have little choice left but to turn to Lionfish as a food source.

Once that happens, it will apply pressure to the Lionfish population and the other species might have an opportunity to return.

If this happens, hopefully, at some point, the balance will return.

Of course, if the Apex Predators simply leave, then all bets are off.
 
+1 on being checked out by large green morays looking for easy lionfish dinner. The huge morays in the dive sites on the west end of St. Croix were extremely "social". Nothing actually threatening, but I didn't expect to be closely inspected so often (and I wasn't carrying a keeper most of the time.)
 
I've read of green moral eels approaching divers in Roatan.
Richard.

I can do you one better. I have an eel I filmed swim up to my wife. Feeding eels right off the spear has happened enough that most of the eels will come right out of the reef to see if you have a fish to feed them.

Last year we had one stalk an entire group of us for about 20 minutes.
 
Personally, I enjoy hunting ,spearing and...yes, killing Lionfish...since everything underwater seems to eating each other in some form or fashion anyway.
Cozumel is one of the few places I've found that permits divers to carry and use pole spears.
 
Personally, I enjoy hunting ,spearing and...yes, killing Lionfish...since everything underwater seems to eating each other in some form or fashion anyway.
Cozumel is one of the few places I've found that permits divers to carry and use pole spears.

Roatan does as well. I did a little the last time I was there. Much harder than it looks.
 
Roatan does as well. I did a little the last time I was there. Much harder than it looks.

People think it's so easy to spear fish.. I mean you do get lucky sometimes and get a easy shot.. But, As they let more and more non-hunters shoot at lionfish they are just teaching them to run and hide.. Most lionfish I get are way up under the reef and smart.. You need to really work at it.. The days of shooting lionfish like they are in a bucket are over..

Jim..
 
What's the general consensus on the practice of feeding newly-speared Lionfish to other fish? I have noticed more and more of this, and get the whole rationale (teaching other fish to hunt them, thus helping control the population). But to my admittedly untrained eye, the only result seems to be more and more fish following divers around looking for a meal. I didn't notice it a single time on any of my previous trips, and this year I've seen some version of that on probably 50% of my dives. Obviously it was born of good intentions, but seems like an awfully slippery slope.

Curious what everyone things about this practice.
I claim to be observing the opposite over the last few years.

5ish years ago the rage was to spear a lionfish and then wave them about randomly until a moray or a shark stole the dead bleeding corpse from the end of the spear.

The theory then developed that this led to aggressive sharks & eels seeking out divers for a free handout. I claim I have witnessed strange moray behaviour. They acted like hungry dogs. Very unnatural compared to my observed behaviour over the last 20 years.

In the last few years every dive op I dived with contained all lionfish kills in a tube. No feeding of anything (other than the tourists!)...
 

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