Lionfish info

Everyone here knows about Lionfish, there are posters around the island. There is nothing that can be done. Can't be spearfished, they live 300 feet deep, as well as all the way up to waist deep.

A female can begin laying eggs at one year of age. They live fifteen years. A female is a full sized adult at three years old. They spawn thirty thousand eggs, every six weeks. And the babies mostly all live, they're a tough fish not prone to parasites or diseases.

In twenty years, they have spread from eleven (they're testing genetics)females off Miami all the way up the East Coast, Bermuda, down through the Bahamas, and on to the Virgins, and just recently they've been found in Belize. That's against the currents.

They are occasional cannibals, but that's it, they have no predators. Sharks won't eat them.  One source says Coronet fish eat them, but Coronet fish usually stay in sea grass fields.

One scientist quipped that chefs ought to come up with tasty recipes, because any fish that tastes good is fished to oblivion. They do get to eighteen inches and three pounds. But they are difficult to handle because of how extremely poisonous their spine are, even several days after they're dead. No more monstrous invader could have been designed.

And recreational divers say, "Look!  So pretty!".   Yes, where they're from.  Not in the Caribbean, please.