3/25/11
Killing Lionfish in Roatan, Honduras
My name is Forrest Phillips. I am one of the owners of Southern Skin Divers Supply in Birmingham, AL. Southern Skin Divers Supply is one of the original SCUBA businesses in the United States (est. 1953). We teach people to dive and run dive trips every week all over the world. Just last week we took 18 divers to the Islands of Utila and Roatan, Honduras. I was personally able to do 21 dives during the week. Our group was really there to pleasure dive and take photos but once we saw how the Lionfish have virtually taken over, we started to kill them. Just last year, on this same trip, we saw only about a dozen Lionfish. The diving here last year was some of the best we have experienced in the Caribbean. This year the diving was average and we saw over 200 Lionfish. My opinion is that the Lionfish have a lot to do with the diminished quality of diving here. We killed just over 100 of them. We dined on them 3 times, twice having ceviche and once a tasty Lionfish Pizza.
3/22/11
Lionfish in St. Croix, USVI Story
I recently went back home to the virgin islands after a hiatus for school and such. It was the first time I had been back in a year and was surprised to see lionfish roaming the reefs. I had heard that they had a arrived but my father and others hadn't seen them yet. Long story short is I am appalled to see how effective their invasion has been, and have recently taken up the hobby of eradicating them (I am happy to hear that they are good to eat and next time I am down will have to cook some up).
I was only down for 5 days for spring break and am 4/7 in my endeavor, on the two dives I brought my spear. Enclosed is the photos of three I brought back to the dock, the other one swam off my spear while I was hunting its brother. Those three were found at 80 feet on the westend of St. Croix North of Sandy Point and the other 4 were found at ~20 feet on the Westend South of Ham's Bluff. I did find 4-5 more at 60 feet in front of the RCA building on the reef with the fiber cables, but didn't have my spear on that dive.
It scares me to see them so well distributed in the water column, and to hear storys of a diver nabbing ~50 of them in one outing on the Southside of the island. Overall the reef looked very healthy am just hoping that the next time I go back it will still be as healthy.
-Stephen
2/18/11
New Lionfish Record Shatters Old Record
Congratulations to Robert Straney from Port Canaveral, Florida for having the new lionfishhunter.com world record lionfish. This fish measured in at 19 inches in length. Here is his story:
It was Monday, January 31, 2011, my first dive trip of the year. My dive buddies and I decided to head out of Port Canaveral Florida, our home port, in search of lobster and whatever legal fish we could find. It was my 3rd dive of the day and I needed two more lobster to complete my 6 lobster limit. They are kinda sparse this time of year and each dive can be hit or miss. I was cruising along in about 80 foot of water, south of Pelican Flats, when I saw this Lion fish nosed into a v-shaped crevice. First let me say, I have never killed a lionfish, I am far from being an authority on them, and clueless as to what qualifies as a "Big One". I just learned they are a nuisance fish and as divers we are expected to "kill them on site". So I decided what the heck, I've got plenty of air, guess I'll whack one of these things. Luckily, he was somewhat rocked up, allowing for an easy kill shot to the head with my pole spear. After a few shakes back and forth, he was done. He floated out and up to the surface where one of my dive buddies recovered him for me. He only retrieved it because he know's a little bit about them and thought it could be a record. When I got him home, he measured right at 19 inches. Fortunately, the shot to the head didn't completely penetrate the fish but was enough to kill him and leave him almost perfectly intact. I've contacted a local taxidermist and plan to have him mounted along with another smaller one a buddy of mine shot on the same day.
The challenge is still open to beat Robert's record. KEEP HUNTING LIONFISH
11/15/10
New York Times articles
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704658204575610721532882174.html?KEYWORDS=lionfish
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/new-weapon-against-invading-fish-the-pan/
11/11/10
Jamaica has Lionfish
Here is a recent story by Erin Burge of Coastal Carolina University:
The spear was homemade by a staff member at the Discovery Bay Marine Lab, Omar Spence. It was a Hawaiian sling style handle (short PVC tube) ziptied to an old piece of rubber tubing. The spear itself was a piece of aluminum conduit. The spear points were 4-5 prongs of heavy gauge stainless steel plugged into the end with a piece of old car tire.
The story for these pictures:
Every year I lead a 2.5 week trip to Discovery Bay, Jamaica, for undergraduates at Coastal Carolina University. While there the students take a coral reef ecology class (http://www.ecologyofcoralreefs.com) and participate in research projects that they devise (with faculty guidance). Our school has been going to Discovery Bay Marine Lab for 25 years, and I have been involved with the program since 2007. In 2007, we didn't see any lionfish on the shallow reefs of the north shore of Jamaica (see the map at the above site). On our local hardbottom dives off of SC and NC lionfish are very abundant at some sites (see my video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qngZBYHlznQ). During class in May 2008 we found 1 lionfish on a deep wall dive, west of DBay. In 2009 we encountered lionfish frequently (I saw saw them on 16 or 17 dives of the 40 I did). By 2010 we saw multiple individuals on EVERY dive at EVERY dive site. A partner and I removed many of the fish we encountered, but there were always more at the sites we visited infrequently. I kept fin clips and length data for these fish to send to NOAA. The largest fish we killed was 370 mm (14 1/2 in) and the smallest was 85 mm (3 1/3 in). I have seen much larger fish locally off of SC and NC. I plan to a research project (pending funding) to examine age, growth, and feeding ecology of Jamaica lionfish in May 2011. We'll need money to buy a few more pole spears, some needle-stick gloves and a better microscope. The reefs of this part of Jamaica are severely overfished, and the addition of lionfish is likely to exacerbate this problem. A pair of fish we speared at about 90' on the west forereef at DBay was herding small reef fishes into an overhanging crevice to devour them. Upon dissection they were packed with small fishes. We saved the fish we speared over a couple of weeks and the kitchen staff prepared a meal of escoveitch fish (http://eatjamaican.com/recipes/escoveitchedfish-recipe.html) for us that fed 14 people with leftovers.
Thanks!
Erin Burge
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
