Rise Of the Lionfish

Lionfish are undoubtedly impressive specimens and make for a stunning sight underwater. With their proud fins and reputations as fierce predators, it seems as though they certainly live up to their name. But in some ways they’ve become victims of their own success.

Recent news reports from Texas to Jamaica to the Bahamas have documented the rapid spread of two particular types of lionfish as an invasive species (Pterois volitans and Pterois miles), and they have quickly become established across the waters of the southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean, upsetting the ecological balance of coral reef ecosystems.

Armed with an array of fearsome venomous spines, lionfish have no native predators in the Atlantic and Caribbean and they are also voracious hunters, feeding on more than fifty other species of fish in the region, including the juvenile snappers, groupers and algae-eating parrotfish that help keep reefs healthy. Additionally, Lionfish multiply quickly, with a single female spawning more than 2 million eggs per year. With these impressive characteristics, it’s little wonder that the populations of Pterois volitans and Pterois miles have grown so rapidly that they’re posing a grave threat to the region’s coral reefs.

Though no one is certain how or when the invasion began, evidence suggests that a few specimens were washed into the ocean from a nearby aquarium during Hurricane Katrina. But regardless of where they came from, some governments are going to great lengths to protect the reefs and the livelihoods that depend upon them, with the US and Jamaica even going so far as to introduce campaigns to promote human consumption of lionfish and training fishermen how to safely catch, handle and clean them. Indeed, The Reef Environmental Education Foundation has prepared a cookbook to educate chefs on how to prepare them, making the most of their delicate and sweet white flesh that reportedly tastes like a cross between snapper and grouper.

Considering the huge impact these two species have made on their new environments then, they serve as an important reminder of the need to always to keep your aquatic pets responsibly, to think of adult sizes when making the decision to buy a species, and of course, to never release a captive fish of any kind into the wild…