Orbicular Batfish..........kill it or leave in peace.

[uncfnp]

So Chugwhump, do I have a chance of spotting this creature when I am diving next week or will he be history?

 

[b-dog]

So 80% of the coral reefs in the Caribbean are dead and divers are worried about batfish and lionfish. I wonder if another invasive species that likes to scuba dive, drive cars, and dumps sewage into the ocean and rivers might be to blame the environmental destruction. Nah, it must be the lionfish and batfish.

 

[letterboy]

So the reefs are dying from poor training and pollution. Not invasive species decimating sections of the reef.

Thanks for your insight

 

[archman]

Some things you can fix. Others you can't.

Managing invasive species in the state of Florida costs over $100 million per year. That's mostly all just *slowing down* the spread of the nasty things.

 

[drrich2]

So 80% of the coral reefs in the Caribbean are dead and divers are worried about batfish and lionfish. I wonder if another invasive species that likes to scuba dive, drive cars, and dumps sewage into the ocean and rivers might be to blame the environmental destruction. Nah, it must be the lionfish and batfish.

It doesn't have to be either/or; it can be both. An ecosystem stressed by, for sake or argument, unusual warm climate, agricultural runoff & other pollutants, changes in the food web with loss of large predators due to overfishing, etc...is likely more vulnerable to added stress from invasive species.

Kind of like a young, healthy man catches the flu, gets sick a few days & gets over it. But the 80 year old man with congestive heart failure, emphysema and frail health is stable & doing fine for years, then gets the flu, declines & dies.

Did the flu kill him? Weeeeell...if he hadn't caught it, he'd probably have lived longer, so yeah, sorta.

Richard.

 

[100days-a-year]

Destroy all monsters.I killed 42 pounds of lionfish last week and saw hundreds more.Don't wanna see anymore species gain a foothold.

 

[CajunDiva]

Oh yeah...thanks for reminding me! During our 10 day visit to Key Largo a couple of weeks ago, I did not see one single lionfish!!! Keep it up...something's working

 

[SeaHawk12]

Fify....

honestly, it probably is better to kill it, but it seems to not be causing any harm oat the moment. Lionfish are not real common in their native habitat

Actually, interestingly enough a recent paper compared the biomass of a lionfish population in the Bahamas with that of a native population in the Indian Ocean. They found that while P. volitans had more biomass than their proxy on the other system (P. miles in this case) the total lionfish biomass on both systems was about equal. Just an interesting little finding.

 

[Icker96]

It doesn't have to be either/or; it can be both. An ecosystem stressed by, for sake or argument, unusual warm climate, agricultural runoff & other pollutants, changes in the food web with loss of large predators due to overfishing, etc...is likely more vulnerable to added stress from invasive species.

Kind of like a young, healthy man catches the flu, gets sick a few days & gets over it. But the 80 year old man with congestive heart failure, emphysema and frail health is stable & doing fine for years, then gets the flu, declines & dies.

Did the flu kill him? Weeeeell...if he hadn't caught it, he'd probably have lived longer, so yeah, sorta.

Richard.

This is an AWESOME analogy and great explanation. Spear this fish, have it for dinner and let us know how it tastes