Copied from http://in.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idINIndia-45170520100105
By Shurna Robbins
GEORGE TOWN (Reuters) - More than 300 scuba divers have been certified to catch red lionfish in a race to prevent the invasive and voracious species from consuming all the young and small fish on the Cayman Islands' famous corals reefs.
DiveTech, a diving operation in the British Caribbean territory, is running a boat each week to specifically catch the fish. Licensed fishermen also collect them on regular boat trips and dives from the shore.
"We tell them, this is not a pleasure dive and they are hunting fish," said Simon Dixon, a lionfish hunter and scuba instructor for DiveTech,
Divers typically work in teams of two, using plastic nets, gloves and sometimes sticks to capture the fish, which has a large head with reddish-brown and white stripes and elongated, venomous spines. Without careful handling, it can cause a painful sting.
"You have to be slow and careful and you have to treat them with respect. We have found they are quite clever. So if you move too quickly and scare the fish off, they will remember you and when you get close again they will retreat immediately," Dixon said.
Native to the Indian and Pacific oceans, red lionfish have no natural predators in the Caribbean and can produce 30,000 eggs each month. Within five weeks they can consume all the juvenile and small fish on a reef, threatening the delicate ecosystem, said Mark Hixon, a marine biologist at Oregon State University.
The species was first spotted in the Cayman Islands in early 2008 and quickly multiplied. Some 600 red lionfish were removed from Cayman waters in the last year, but the effort may not be enough to push back the invading fish, experts say.
Bradley Johnson, a research officer with the islands' Environment Department, said the department was receiving reports of more of the species in the waters and that their sizes also were increasing each month.
"They have been caught in all habitats around the islands including dive sites down to 120 feet (36 metres), shallow waters and in the North Sound. We have also confirmed reports from as deep as 300 feet (91 metres)."
BEATING THEM BY EATING THEM
Hixon, the Oregon State biologist, will travel to the Cayman Islands next month to scout reef sites and meet with government officials in preparation for a research project sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
"At present, the only solution to the invasion is for divers to remove lionfish from the reefs," Hixon said. "We are also working in the Pacific Ocean to study lionfish in their native range to determine why they are uncommon there relative to the Atlantic and Caribbean."
Turning the red lionfish into a seafood dish, as has been done in the Bahamas, is another possible control method. Cooking destroys the toxins in the meat, which has been compared to grouper and snapper.
"Lionfish are tasty so the government can help by encouraging a lionfish fishery. There are even expensive restaurants in the U.S. serving lionfish as a top-dollar conservation dish," Hixon said.
Scuba divers are prohibited from catching fish on most reefs surrounding the Cayman Islands, but regulators have made an exception for the red lionfish because of the threat it poses to marine life.
Environment Department staff train and license volunteer divers to safely catch the fish, which are then turned over to the government for collection of DNA and tracking.
U.S. government researchers believe the red lionfish was introduced into Florida waters during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when an aquarium broke and at least six fish spilled into Miami's Biscayne Bay.
In recent years, its population has exploded along the U.S. eastern seaboard and the Atlantic islands of the Bahamas and Bermuda, and throughout the Caribbean into Puerto Rico, St. Croix, Turks and Caicos, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba and Belize.
First-time sightings in 2009 occurred in Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras and Aruba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
DiveTech said it intends to continue running the lionfish boat trips as long as there is enough local interest to support it.
(Editing by Jane Sutton and Paul Simao)
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