Thanks Jay. Do you know if they do Lionfish hunts? I would help thin the population if allowed!
Short answer-YES!!!!!
Longer version- I don't know if it was "Sanctioned" or not, but once our DM's figured out that we knew what we were doing underwater, if we saw a lionfish, they would swim over with the kind of spear that has the surgical tubing loop on the end, put it on your thumb and pull back then release to "shoot" the lionfish. I killed 2 and missed the moby-friggin-dick of lionfish when he dodged the spear and went way back in the reef..... Call me Ishmael...I will be back.... Once you had them stuck on the end, the DM's would take it away and either cut the fins off or just stab then with another spear as a keeper. When you got one you could hear the DM cheer with joy (WOO HOOO) , but a miss drew a laugh. I'm not real sure how I could miss from literal inches away...but the little suckers are fast when they need to be. My guess is Moby didn't get that big being stupid. I really think they enjoyed introducing us to lionfish hunting as much as we did. Needless to say it was all grins on the boat after the dive. Big, toothy, ear to ear, tropical bliss grins. The big hunt was on the day that the kitchen staff went out to an island and set up a grill. They had pork chops, sea bass, and vegetables (in think ham sandwich stuff too) but the real highlight was when they cleaned and grilled the lionfish. Our group had killed over a dozen. In Cozumel, we have had lionfish ceviche, garlic and butter flat top grilled LF, and coconut crusted and fried LF...all is incredible, but the charcoal grilled lionfish was probably the best I have ever had although the location and experience probably had something to do as well. The only drawback was no beer. A very cold Salvavida (the self proclaimed national beer of Honduras) would have probably been better than....well...never mind. I'm going to keep this rated G so I don't get SATRAP slapped.
I think the wreck dive was my favorite dive, but the lionfish hunting was a close second. I can see where it would be addictive. No one had the PVC tube keepers, they just kept adding them to the end of the spear...it worked fine.
I would bet that if you could find enough divers at the resort that wanted to do a specific LF hunt dive, a boat could be put together to do that. I have seen that done in Cozumel. The afternoon dive in particular was never packed in our group. Our last dive only had 3 divers. In our travels, we have found that any dive operator will work to accommodate any reasonable request. The only concern I would have about lionfish hunting would be if a diver got stuck/stung after the kill. As I understand it, you would be miserable for a couple of days. The LF were all on shallow reefs, I'd say in the 40 foot or less range. With a decent sac rate, you could stay down for days. Our resort did have Aluminum 100's as well for no charge.
Wherever you end up in Honduras, please drink several Salvavida's and a few Monkey La Las for me.
Safe travels,
Jay
