Over the last decade or so we have been making our way around the Caribbean. My first encounter with a Lion fish was about 10 years ago when I heard that this invasive species from the Indo-Pacific region was slowing making its way around the Caribbean. I cannot say that I have been to every island in the region, but I have come close. I have seen them as far south as Tobaggo. I’ve seen them as far north as Florida. I have seen them as far east as Barbados. I have seen them as far west as Roatan, Cozumel and Playa del Carmen. Lion fish are eating and reproducing machines. A marine biologist in Belize told me that the female lion fish produces about 40,000 eggs every 3 days. The reproductive ability of rabbits pale by comparison.

One of my friends in Barbados let me know that last week his shop shot 90 lion fish while my friends in Roatan shot over 130 last week. There are lion fish round ups throughout the Caribbean. I have seen roundups in the Caymans, and Curacao and Belize. Ultimately, the lion fish has no natural predators in the Caribbean. Although there have been efforts to train moray eels, groupers and sharks to feed on them, often it still requires the spearing of the fish in the first instance. I don’t know what the answer is, but I certainly hope we find a better answer than we have now because from what I have seen we appear to be losing the battle.

Some might say so what. The problem is that with depleted native species, like parrot fish and others who eat the algae off the reef the reefs could eventually die out. I think about the great limpet that only resides in Monterrey bay and wonder, can we really afford such a loss. There are proteins that are created by the great limpet that make cancer drugs more effective and which at the present have not yet been synthesized. The proteins from the limpid sell for about $34,000 per gram or more than 600 times the price of gold. I wonder can we afford to lose even one species of flora or fauna in the Caribbean? I keep wondering if there is a better solution to removing this invasive species. Yet at the same time i think about instances in which people have introduced one invasive species to remove another and those efforts have gone terribly wrong,consider africanized bees….