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Lionfish: Beware the Beauties
 Sometimes beauty can mask danger, as in the case of exotic lionfish in Bermuda. With their beautiful contrasting patterns of maroon and white and their long feathery fins that resemble flowing gowns, they appear harmless enough. But they are voracious predators.
These foreign invaders eat native Bermudian fish and crustaceans in large quantities, but have no natural predators to keep them in check. Their venomous spines can cause painful wounds in humans and deter larger fish that might otherwise eat them. Even hungry sharks veer away when researchers try to feed them lionfish.
The fishing and tourism industries are in jeopardy, warns Chris Flook, who leads the charge against lionfish for the government of Bermuda. "They eat just about any fish, crab or shrimp they can fit into their mouths. If they managed to replace parrotfish or the other fish that clean algae from the reef, then corals wouldn't grow anymore."
Because they present such a threat to marine ecosystems, the Reef Environmental Education Foundation works with divers, aquariums and government agencies to eradicate ÿ or at least to control — these invaders. "We have set up a program for scuba divers with special permits to cull lionfish in sensitive areas," says Flook. "We have 120 divers in the field licensed to bring them in for analysis. Our goal is not eradication — too vast — but managing the population and keeping nursery areas lionfish-free."
Native to the tropical Indo-Pacific region, lionfish are displayed in private aquariums for their pretty maroon stripes and billowy fins. A few such specimens escaped into Biscayne Bay, south of Miami, after the 1992 landfall of Hurricane Andrew. Over the next eight years, divers reported sightings up the coast in Florida, Georgia and into the Carolinas. In 2000, the first invader was collected in Bermuda, and many more have been sighted since.
"The first sighting in The Bahamas was in 2004. Four years later, it was the dominant fish of its size along the reefs off Nassau," says Flook.
In 2007, lionfish invaded Cuba and the Turks and Caicos. In 2008, they reached the Dominican Republic, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands and Haiti. Juveniles have been spotted as far north as Rhode Island.
REEF maintains a database to which divers and snorkellers are encouraged to report sightings (www.reef.org). They can even join lionfish research trips and other organised projects. In Bermuda, visitors can help to protect native species by reporting lionfish sightings by telephone to 293-4464, ext. 820, or by e-mail to lionfish@gov.bm.
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Relax, enjoy, save and see Bermuda by bus. A blue or pink pole indicates bus stops. If the pole is topped with blue, the bus travels from Hamilton; if the pole is topped pink, the route is toward Hamilton.
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