Article: What do you do when you have too many lionfish?

[melev]

You can view the page at http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...-many-lionfish

[timmybenz]

I was diving in Jamacia last month and could not belive how many lionfish I saw. We found at least 2 on every dive and on one dive we saw 10. Some were only a few inchs big and others had to be about a foot long

[MarcG]

I was just in Jamaica too! We saw a few just off the shore of the Sandals resort and then a few more in Grand Cayman when we went Snuba diving. If I'm not mistaken I thought that they weren't native to the Caribbean. I've heard that people have released them down there and they have started to "take over." Not sure if that's true but it seems that they are growing in numbers

[T5FL]

I live in Florida and this topic is on the news here and there, its definitely a problem. No restaurants ive heard of are serving them. Its your standard grouper, mahi mahi, and yellow tail snapper.

[melev]

Well, I didn't get to dine on any, but Matthew Pederson, MASNA Award Winner 2009 did his part. I can't imagine ever trying this!

[mpedersen]

NICE Marc! Terrifying even though I've lipped hundreds of other fish. NONE were "venemous"! Witt made me do it.

[melev]

Looks like Matt's had some help recently. More than 500 were captured in a Lionfish Derby:

http://cbs4.com/local/keys.lionfish.reef.2.1908517.html

[fish42002]

It doesn't look like it would taste that good. My guess would be they would be expensive to harvest making restaurants stay with the more popular and more commercially caught fish. How would you catch them? Do they swim in schools? I thought they stayed to themselves.

[NightShade]

I believe that most of the time you have to dive and selectively catch the fish, but I know that outside of the US there are a lot of places that would likely enjoy the increased income that catching the fish would bring. There are also more upscale restaurants that like picking up the weird and different, I know of one that only deals with wild game meat, lion steaks, moose burgers, etc. Lionfish and other types of fish would likely be no different.

I will probably be going to Jamaica within the next year or so and have thought of ways that I could catch them and bring them back to sell. If the can be caught live they would probably be worth more that way, which is another option for the wild ones that don't belong.