Marine Life – The Lionfish

Witnessing a magnificent Lionfish glide through the water with its memorizing fan-like fins provides an experience that stays in one’s memory for a lifetime. The lionfish is without a doubt one of the most graceful and intricate looking fish that you can come across.

Lionfish have several names like zebrafish, firefish, turkeyfish, and more. An adult can grow as large as 18 inches, while juveniles may be as small as 1 inch or less. The lionfish is one of the most venomous fish on the ocean floor. The venom of the lionfish is delivered through up to 18 needle-like dorsal fins. It is purely defensive and relies on camouflage and lightning-fast reflexes to capture prey of mainly shrimp and fish. A sting from a lionfish is extremely painful to humans and can cause nausea and breathing difficulties, but is rarely fatal. Give lionfish enough space and they pose no threat.

Lionfish are native to many areas from the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, western Australia and Malaysia east to French Polynesia and the United Kingdom’s Pitcairn Islands, north to southern Japan and southern Korea and south to Lord Howe Island off the east coast of Australia and the Kermadec Islands of New Zealand.

Over the recent years Lionfish have been reported far from their native homes in areas where they do not belong like the southeastern United States coast from Florida to North Carolina. I recently dove in Cozumel where lionfish have been somehow introduced to the water and should not be there. The divemasters in Cozumel are actively working to kill the lionfish; during one of my dives a friendly grouper whom the divemasters had been training to eat lionfish followed us through the entire dive like a little puppy begging for a treat. When the divemaster came across a lionfish the grouper watched over his shoulder while he killed it with a spear and then proceeded to feed it to the grouper.

The grouper at first spit it out but after the divemaster introduced it to the groupers mouth again it eventually ate it. Admitedly it was very bittersweet to witness – it was my first lionfish and I was sad to see it killed. Though bittersweet it is a good thing that the divemasters are doing this, because the lionfish have no prey in the area and are killing many fish and the reefs. They need to have a predator in order to keep them from taking over killing all that is left of the marine life in the area.

The lionfish, a beauty but yet an alien invader…