Finally the Roatan Marine Park gets a clue

[Mike]

But spearing each one you see isn't going to help much I'm affraid.

On a single guided dive by a DM, what percentage of the total lionfish on that reef section do you think the DM will see? It's most probably less than 1%... Then how many of those can he spear on that dive? Once again, probably very low, maybe less than 50% of that 1%(I'm just throwing numbers here for discussion)??? So we are even lower... Say 10 DMs pass on that reef each day? That's still a very small number of the total being hunted... And here is the worst part! Hunting success is density dependant! The more you hunt, the fewer there are, the harder it gets to spear them!!!! Success drops and you are left with a nice stable population that can easily maintain itself or even explode back up if the fishing pressure is reduced (DMs get sick of doing this). To to recap, Lots of effort... for low results yield... That are just temporary... Believe me, I wish it wasn't so... But it is...

They're here, so lets make the most of it. It eating them could take the fishing pressure off of Groupers and such, it would at least have a minimal benefit to the area!

The biggest problem is every island nation seems to want to operate in a vacuum about lion fish, as if nobody else has gone through what they are now going through.

There are models that are working.

If you dive in Cozumel you'll quickly see how the DMs have culled the diving reefs to the point that on a dive you'll find a DM killing maybe one on a dive if they are lucky, and they will be small.

The very fact that you aren't seeing large lion fish on dives in cozumel is showing the success of DMs killing lionfish. They do it all the time and they are keeping the diving reefs very policed of lion fish. Anything that isn't small is most likley wandering into a new territory from the deep, and he won't last very long.

As I said, Roatan isn't on Mars, and Roatan isn't the first place to be invaded by the lion fish.

Roatan needs to look around and explore what is working elsewhere instead of being so arogant or ignorant to believe they will just figure this out themselves as if nobody else has any experience with it.

The lion fish won't be wiped out, they will be here now forever. You're success will be in picking and choosing your defensible spaces and going about protecting them on a daily basis. You need to get them in their juvenile size. Creating a market for them as a dinner fish is part of the plan, but it's a small part, a minor part, it's not going to protect the reefs you want to protect from them and save them for diving, the only way to do that is get somebody involved who will cull them at any size, most specifically juvenile size which are not big enough to attract fisherman. DMs are doing this in Cozumel and doing it well. Roatan just needs to look around and observe what others are doing and stop trying to reinvent the wheel. It's not rocket science for Dms to kill a lion fish, I've seen it many times, you can see it over and over again on Youtube. I've seen the killed with lots of stuff. The fish are not fast, they move slow and are not scared of anything.

 

[CODMAN]

Well I'll be happy to be wrong about this in the long run! And you are definetly right that countries should unite their knowledge about this... But that's not always an easy thing to do...

The biggest problem is every island nation seems to want to operate in a vacuum about lion fish, as if nobody else has gone through what they are now going through.

There are models that are working.

If you dive in Cozumel you'll quickly see how the DMs have culled the diving reefs to the point that on a dive you'll find a DM killing maybe one on a dive if they are lucky, and they will be small.

The very fact that you aren't seeing large lion fish on dives in cozumel is showing the success of DMs killing lionfish. They do it all the time and they are keeping the diving reefs very policed of lion fish. Anything that isn't small is most likley wandering into a new territory from the deep, and he won't last very long.

As I said, Roatan isn't on Mars, and Roatan isn't the first place to be invaded by the lion fish.

Roatan needs to look around and explore what is working elsewhere instead of being so arogant or ignorant to believe they will just figure this out themselves as if nobody else has any experience with it.

The lion fish won't be wiped out, they will be here now forever. You're success will be in picking and choosing your defensible spaces and going about protecting them on a daily basis. You need to get them in their juvenile size. Creating a market for them as a dinner fish is part of the plan, but it's a small part, a minor part, it's not going to protect the reefs you want to protect from them and save them for diving, the only way to do that is get somebody involved who will cull them at any size, most specifically juvenile size which are not big enough to attract fisherman. DMs are doing this in Cozumel and doing it well. Roatan just needs to look around and observe what others are doing and stop trying to reinvent the wheel. It's not rocket science for Dms to kill a lion fish, I've seen it many times, you can see it over and over again on Youtube. I've seen the killed with lots of stuff. The fish are not fast, they move slow and are not scared of anything.

 

[PlantationBeachResort]

In neighboring Cayos Cochinos the environmental foundation that governs the park here spent months deciding if they were even a threat to the reefs. Divers started spotting them on occasion and when they were being reported, the foundation decided they needed more time to study their behavior before anybody was allowed to harm them.

Since Cayos Cochinos has a strict no spear fishing policy, even now there is only a select group of 6 individuals who are allowed to kill a lionfish in our marine park. Talk about reinventing the wheel! We still don't see them too often on dives, about 1 in every 3 dives, but we're the only resort in these waters so we can't police all the sites daily.

The foundation told the local fishermen that they can be eaten, and even printed posters to hang in their villages about how to prepare and cook them, but the locals aren't allowed to enter the waters with spears. They are expected to net them... Good luck.

 

[castaways01]

the RMP began working on an aggressive plan of attack.

I know we've beat this one to death already, but an "aggressive plan of attack" might be to incorporate the lionfish tournaments (or roundup or derby) as held in a series of three in the Florida Keys and elsewhere. You won't get all of them but it may make a dent in the population. They took more than 2000 of them out of the waters in the Bahamas - 1400 in one day.

BTW, there was a huge (at least 1-meter) lionfish at Calvin's Crack yesterday. Must be good eatings here because these guys are getting BIG.

 

[RTBDiver]

They took more than 2000 of them out of the waters in the Bahamas - 1400 in one day.

:

Yet in all these round up type things there sems to be one common factor and that is that those generally killing most of the lionfish are spearfisherman and not DM's with a little spare time on their hands.
Thank you for mentioning your post and if you look back you will see i was one of the few that did not question the lionfish issue back in 2006 when i replied back in 2006, "MANY YEARS AGO"
Marcia,

If this were a few years back I would think you just might have
seen a scorpionfish or some other similar species yet now it would
not surprise me if you did see a lionfish. We now have them off the
coast of North Florida as well as off the coast of Georgia. No one
is quite sure how they got there, either people let them loos,
container ship transporting them lost a container, caught in a
ballast tank, etc.. But they are here and reproducing. I have been
on many dives and seen them if different areas and the local marine
biologists have basically told spearfisherman to feel free to shoot
them but if they do to be carefull transporting and please bring
them in for study. We also have Pacific batfish here in Florida
which are very similar to a Spade fish and they actually hang out
together. They too have been put on the list to shoot. It may sound
cruel but at least with the lionfish, they take up nesting areas of
native fish and have no natural predators here so their numbers are
growing rapidly. We have also had many areas depleted of some
natural species due to the introduction of Tilapia thruout Florida.
I don't know, I am not a biologist but I would suggest that if the
sighting are confirmed that it be brought up seriously with the reef
people. Sure they are pretty and something so unusual can be quite a
find but they can be devastating to native fishlife.
On another note, we have a small uper class Island off the south
coast of florida, home to many wealthy and famous, that is now being
over run by Iguana. The estimates are that there are at least 10-15
Iguana to every person. They are going crazy on how to get rid of
them, they also are not native and are disruping the native plants
and wildlife. I was thinking the simplest way would be just to let a
few of Roatans best Iguana Hunters come over with a barge and in
probably a few weeks the problem would be solved.
Anyway, Sorry so long on your lionfish sighting.
Eric

 

[cocoloca]

BTW, there was a huge (at least 1-meter) lionfish at Calvin's Crack yesterday. Must be good eatings here because these guys are getting BIG.

I want what you are drinking! lol

Worlds largest lionfish

 

[castaways01]

I want what you are drinking! lol

Worlds largest lionfish

OMG, I'd like to have back what I was drinkin. I meant a foot, not meter. Sorry.

 

[nagel]

Thanks for clearing this up, I was trying to invision a Lion Fish that big....wow and I was diving Calvin's Crack a couple weeks ago, how did I miss that.

 

[Fred R.]

First, the lionfish invasion started with an aquarium damaged during hurricane Andrew in Miami. According to NOAA studies, six or seven lionfish were responsible for the entire Gulf Stream invasion. Many people believe there was a second major release from the aquarium at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, again due to a hurricane.

The fact that the Atlantic lionfish have almost no parasites strongly indicates aquarium release not bilge water transfer or anything like that.

The study where it was said that ‘one lionfish removed almost 80% of the small reef fish in a couple of weeks’ is so flawed as to be laughable, except that people keep quoting it. You have to have a baseline that is meaningful in order to talk about the reduction in population. The reefs have had their fish populations altered drastically by overfishing, what that study really showed was a correction of a horrendous overpopulation of small reef fish.

Lionfish tournaments demonstrate how ineffective kill programs are. Look at the Cozumel numbers; they took two thousand fish from a very small area that was already patrolled. I would bet that if you did a sunset dive in that same place the next day you would observe similar numbers still on the reef.

This brings me to the biology of the lionfish. Lionfish spend at least the first ten months of their life in the open ocean, probably drifting in the Sargassum mats. As they approach their first birthday they listen for ‘noisy’ reefs and swim towards and colonize them. Kill all you want, the next wind that blows weed near the reef, it will rain juvenile lionfish. No study has been done, but my strong suspicion is that Mahi-mahi (or whatever you call them locally) preys upon these fry in the open ocean. (we need more Mahi-mahi in the open ocean)

It has been reported that large lionfish eat the small ones (by the same guy that reported that 80% thing) which, if true, means that the best way to control lionfish population density is to leave the large lionfish on the reef so they can patrol and remove the incoming colonizers. All kill programs target the big ones first, it is human nature. When large numbers of small lionfish colonize, they grow up together creating dense populations.

Lionfish have predators in the Atlantic. Not only are lionfish believed to be their own predator, but the jewfish, Goliath grouper, or whatever, should be a predator of them. E. itajara is a spiny food specialist, as is E. quinquefasciatus, which is what the Pacific version of the jewfish is now called. There are many reports of correlation, lots of Goliath Groupers, no lionfish. We need more Goliaths in the ocean!

Removing lionfish from a reef is like getting rid of cockroaches from a house (in the tropics!). First, for every one you see, there is at least ten more hiding out of sight. Second, they live and breed in places that are inaccessible. Third, over their life history they are neither territorial nor stationary and they travel over vast distances. Last, they are small and don’t aggregate in a vulnerable fashion.

Oh, DM’s should be doing their JOB! Which is NOT spear fishing.

The entire Atlantic from Massachusetts to Venezuela was colonized by a release of six or seven fish in just eighteen years! To me, this means that the best way to deal with them is by general conservation to create a healthy environment where the lionfish will be ‘just another fish’ as they are in the Pacific.

 

[Mike]

First, the lionfish invasion started with an aquarium damaged during hurricane Andrew in Miami. According to NOAA studies, six or seven lionfish were responsible for the entire Gulf Stream invasion. Many people believe there was a second major release from the aquarium at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, again due to a hurricane.

The fact that the Atlantic lionfish have almost no parasites strongly indicates aquarium release not bilge water transfer or anything like that.

The study where it was said that ‘one lionfish removed almost 80% of the small reef fish in a couple of weeks’ is so flawed as to be laughable, except that people keep quoting it. You have to have a baseline that is meaningful in order to talk about the reduction in population. The reefs have had their fish populations altered drastically by overfishing, what that study really showed was a correction of a horrendous overpopulation of small reef fish.

Lionfish tournaments demonstrate how ineffective kill programs are. Look at the Cozumel numbers; they took two thousand fish from a very small area that was already patrolled. I would bet that if you did a sunset dive in that same place the next day you would observe similar numbers still on the reef.

This brings me to the biology of the lionfish. Lionfish spend at least the first ten months of their life in the open ocean, probably drifting in the Sargassum mats. As they approach their first birthday they listen for ‘noisy’ reefs and swim towards and colonize them. Kill all you want, the next wind that blows weed near the reef, it will rain juvenile lionfish. No study has been done, but my strong suspicion is that Mahi-mahi (or whatever you call them locally) preys upon these fry in the open ocean. (we need more Mahi-mahi in the open ocean)

It has been reported that large lionfish eat the small ones (by the same guy that reported that 80% thing) which, if true, means that the best way to control lionfish population density is to leave the large lionfish on the reef so they can patrol and remove the incoming colonizers. All kill programs target the big ones first, it is human nature. When large numbers of small lionfish colonize, they grow up together creating dense populations.

Lionfish have predators in the Atlantic. Not only are lionfish believed to be their own predator, but the jewfish, Goliath grouper, or whatever, should be a predator of them. E. itajara is a spiny food specialist, as is E. quinquefasciatus, which is what the Pacific version of the jewfish is now called. There are many reports of correlation, lots of Goliath Groupers, no lionfish. We need more Goliaths in the ocean!

Removing lionfish from a reef is like getting rid of cockroaches from a house (in the tropics!). First, for every one you see, there is at least ten more hiding out of sight. Second, they live and breed in places that are inaccessible. Third, over their life history they are neither territorial nor stationary and they travel over vast distances. Last, they are small and don’t aggregate in a vulnerable fashion.

Oh, DM’s should be doing their JOB! Which is NOT spear fishing.

The entire Atlantic from Massachusetts to Venezuela was colonized by a release of six or seven fish in just eighteen years! To me, this means that the best way to deal with them is by general conservation to create a healthy environment where the lionfish will be ‘just another fish’ as they are in the Pacific.

Great post, but I'd venture 50% of it is disputable and / or at best unverifieable / subject to interpretation.