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Daily Bucket: Florida's Lionfish [1]
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Date: 2025-06-12
The Daily Bucket is a regular series from the Backyard Science group. Here we talk about Mother Nature in all her glory, especially the parts that live nearby. So let us know (as close as you are comfortable) where you are and what's going on around you. What's the weather like? Seen any interesting plants, bugs or critters? Are there birds at your feeders? Deer, foxes or snakies in your yard? Seen any cool rocks or geological features? Post your observations and notes here. And photos. We like photos. :)
The Lionfish, also called the Turkeyfish—is an attractive and popular saltwater aquarium fish that has venomous spines on its back, breeds like a rabbit, and has an insatiable appetite for eating local fish.
There are 10 species of Lionfish in the genus Pterois. They are known by a variety of names—Lionfish, Turkeyfish, Dragonfish, Zebrafish, Firefish, or Butterfly Codfish. One of these species, the Red Lionfish, Pterois volitans, is native to the Indo-Pacific ocean regions. The Red Lionfish is extraordinarily attractive, and when the saltwater-aquarium hobby exploded in the US in the early 1980’s, it quickly became popular in the pet trade and was imported from Indonesia and the Philippines in large numbers. (Even Captain Picard of the starship Enterprise had a Red Lionfish in his Ready Room.)
Unfortunately, many of the people who purchased the fish for their home aquariums didn’t really know what they were getting into. Like most members of the Scorpionfish family, the Red Lionfish has venomous spines in its pectoral and dorsal fins. Although they are not usually fatal to humans, they can give an enormously painful sting (leading to the common name “Firefish”). The Red Lionfish also has a proportionately large mouth, allowing it to eat any smaller fish that share its tank (up to two-thirds its own length). As a result, it wasn’t very long before aquarium hobbyists in Florida began releasing their no-longer-wanted pets into the sea.
The first record of a Lionfish captured in Florida waters was in 1985, when a P. volitans (most likely a released pet) was found off the coast of Dania Beach. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew destroyed a local aquarium near Miami and released at least six captive Lionfish into the Bay of Biscayne; there were also reports that the hurricane had wrecked a number of outdoors holding tanks for tropical fish importers and released their contents. Within a few years, wild Lionfish were being sighted at Miami, Boca Raton, Palm Beach, and Bermuda, and by 2000 they had spread up the East Coast as far as North Carolina. The species reached the Bahamas by 2005 and had also spread to the Florida Keys—by 2010 they had gone all the way up the Gulf coast of Florida to the Panhandle, and south to the Caribbean and Mexico. By 2013 they had spread as far as Barbados and the coast of Venezuela. Genetic testing of captured Lionfish link them to populations in the Philippines, and indicate that the entire existing population here in the US is descended from fewer than a dozen breeding females from two distinct locations, probably escaped or released captives.
In the areas where it has been introduced, the Lionfish has no known predators. The native sharks and other predators do not recognize it as a prey species, and the venomous spines protect it from most predators who might try to sample it. The females, meanwhile, are prolific breeders. They can lay up to 30,000 eggs at a time—and usually breed every month. As a result, the Lionfish’s population growth has been explosive.
In such densities, the fish have an enormous impact on local ecosystems. Not only do they devastate the numbers of small native reef fish, but they compete for food with larger fish such as grouper and snapper, reducing those populations as well. In many areas, Lionfish infestations have reduced local species, in both number and diversity, by over 50%, and have established themselves as the most abundant fish. One study demonstrated that Lionfish can reduce the number of smaller fish in the area by 80% in just five weeks.
But because of their prolific breeding rate and their invulnerability to predators, Florida Fish and Wildlife officials have pretty much given up any hope of eradicating the species. So the goal right now is to attempt to cull as many of them as possible to try to keep their population densities at a tolerable level. Research is being undertaken to develop a fish trap that targets the Lionfish. All along the coasts of Florida, periodic “Lionfish Hunts” are organized for divers and fishermen, with prizes awarded for the most Lionfish killed. These outings can remove as many as 5-6,000 fish at a time. In another creative tactic, Florida officials attempted to make up for the Lionfish’s lack of predators by turning Florida’s citizens themselves into predators, by commissioning the writing of a number of cookbooks with Lionfish recipes.
Can human predators become an effective check to the Lionfish invasion? It remains to be seen . . . But so far the situation does not seem to have improved very much.
Some photos. I am not a diver and underwater photography is beyond me, so these are all fishies from Aquariums around the country. Most of them are fish that have been confiscated from people who were keeping them illegally.
And now it is your turn: what’s swimming around in your neck of the woods?
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