Attention, Caribbean reefs: Something hungry this way comes.You have to admit it adds a splash of exotic beauty to the environment, like a hot new exchange student arriving at your high school. If it turns out, however, that the ingénue's hairdo is toxic and that she clones herself incessantly and proceeds to devour the other kids, the infatuation segues into a horror movie. That's about where we are with lionfish. Also known as firefish for the burn of their poisonous spines, lionfish aren't Caribbean natives. These flamboyant, frilly-winged relatives of the mud-ugly scorpionfish normally reside in the Indo-Pacific. The aquarium trade brought them to the United States, and Hurricane Andrew, along with ignorant fish keepers, released them into the Atlantic off Florida in the early '90s. Since then, lionfish have spread up the East Coast all the way to Rhode Island. Sometime around 2004, red lionfish (Pterois volitans) made the jump across the fast-moving Gulf Stream to the Bahamas - an amazing feat for a fish that customarily moves at tai-chi speed."The secret to how they made it across is that it wasn't the adult fish, but the eggs," says Lad Atkins, special projects director for the Reef Environmental Foundation (REEF). "Lionfish create an egg mass that floats for several days, allowing it to drift long distances, driven by winds and currents." When reports began trickling in of individual lionfish spotted on Bahamian reefs, Atkins told local dive operators that they didn't want these invasive predators around, and that he'd come collect them. "The first response was always lukewarm," Atkins says. "Divers, especially underwater photographers, were traveling to the Bahamas just to see lionfish, so the operators didn't want to lose a popular new attraction."The bad news was that each of those egg masses included up to 30,000 baby lionfish, which found the Bahamas' warm waters an ideal habitat. Even worse, the new immigrants themselves began reproducing, with every female releasing an egg mass every month. In 2006, the lionfish population exploded exponentially. On reefs where divers had been excited to spot a single exotic lionfish, they began seeing as many as 100. "There are now millions of lionfish in the Bahamas," says Atkins. "'Infested' is not too strong a word." They've also spread to the Turks and Caicos, Cuba, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.The issue goes way beyond the prickly problem of reefs covered in critters that pack a poisonous sting. Mark Hixon and Mark Albins of Oregon State University's Department of Zoology have been studying "the lionfish effect" in the Exumas. In a forthcoming research paper, they pre-sent the results of monitoring fish populations on 20 patch reefs with and without lionfish. The devastation surprised them, with reefs hosting just one of the voracious predators showing 79 percent fewer small fish after just five weeks. The researchers watched one lionfish eat more than 20 wrasses in a half-hour.
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| Photo by: Christian Mehlfuhrer |
Lionfish can also consume prey up to two-thirds their own 1-foot length. Parrotfish, cardinalfish, chromis, damselfish and more than 40 other Caribbean species that have been found in lionfish stomachs literally don't know what's hitting them. Lionfish use their extravagant fins to herd and corner prey and then strike with a lightning gulp. No native predator attacks like that, so local fish have no innate defenses. And other species that might eat lionfish and keep populations in check, like grouper, have been severely overfished and now face competition from this intruder that has an unfair advantage in hunting.Now getting full cooperation from local dive operators, REEF has collected 1,500 lionfish - as Atkins says, a drop in the bucket. "The chance of complete eradication," reports Hixon, "is untenable." The key, according to Atkins, is to try to stop the invasion at the next natural barrier, the Mona Passage between the D.R. and Puerto Rico. If lionfish cross that, it's just a matter of time before they infest the rest of the Caribbean, leaving few options besides trying to sweep them off the most sensitive reefs. Any success will take a concerted effort, though, and so far Caribbean nations - including the United States - are moving too slowly.At least one Bahamian has taken it upon herself to stick it to the lionfish: Julie Lightbourn, owner of Sip Sip restaurant on Harbour Island. She's decided to turn the tables and eat the invaders, one by one. Lightbourn describes the meat as white, flaky and delicate tasting. "I made a batch of lionfish fingers for a local fisherman who'd caught some," she says. "And he told me, 'Man, Julie, dat taste better dan fish!'"For information on naturalist-led dive trips to fight the infestation, see reef.org. You can see a chart of current lionfish sightings at nas.er.usgs.gov/taxgroup/fish/lionfishdistribution.asp.Online Editor's Note: CLICK HERE to check out another Eco Watch spotlight on cleaning up the reefs in Bonaire.
