Today's catch ! Lion fish tacos tonight ... Good eating from the easy end of the island.
Lion Fish in the Cayman Islands
About three years ago the first lion fish was spotted in Little Cayman. Since then, they have grown in numbers and have become a regular sighting on all three islands. One thing is agreed on, they are here to stay. Although they are a beautiful fish, they don’t belong in the Caribbean and they can devastate a reef system by eating all the baby reef fish. They eat 11,000 each year! They have incredible appetites,
The Cayman Islands had a quick, direct and well organized response to this invasive species. The Department of Environment, together with REEF, put together a free and comprehensive awareness and education program. The course was informative and answered all the questions we had. After all, they look like beautiful fish and none of us wanted to harm them. With this education, we were granted a license to catch the fish. The idea being, as they have no predators in these waters, we can try to keep the population under control until either we (humans) find an answer, or a local predator is found.
No one knows exactly how they ended up here. The best guess is that
the lion fish escaped from an aquarium damaged by a hurricane in
Florida. They have traced the population back to just 6 fish. From that
small amount of fish, they have populated the east coast of America
from New York to the Caribbean.
JJ Divers is committed to helping promote awareness and preserving our reefs. We are working with the Department of Environment to do our part in keeping the numbers of lion fish under control. Until a natural predator is found, it has to be us.
About three years ago the first lion fish was spotted in Little Cayman. Since then, they have grown in numbers and have become a regular sighting on all three islands. One thing is agreed on, they are here to stay. Although they are a beautiful fish, they don’t belong in the Caribbean and they can devastate a reef system by eating all the baby reef fish. They eat 11,000 each year! They have incredible appetites,
The Cayman Islands had a quick, direct and well organized response to this invasive species. The Department of Environment, together with REEF, put together a free and comprehensive awareness and education program. The course was informative and answered all the questions we had. After all, they look like beautiful fish and none of us wanted to harm them. With this education, we were granted a license to catch the fish. The idea being, as they have no predators in these waters, we can try to keep the population under control until either we (humans) find an answer, or a local predator is found.
JJ Divers is committed to helping promote awareness and preserving our reefs. We are working with the Department of Environment to do our part in keeping the numbers of lion fish under control. Until a natural predator is found, it has to be us.
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