Lionfish Threaten the Survivability of our Native Fishery

Enclosed is a viable plan to

~ Save our Fishery ~

This is a snapshot of the Future of our Fishery if we continue to delay

implementing sustainable, aggressive, year-round population control!

Photo by: Scott Bartel 2013

Florida Panhandle, 3 years

after the first LF sighting.

Firefishvideo.com

Aggressively target a fish that can deliver a painful sting, has very little meat, get

them to do this year round, at their own expense, on their own time, for NO pay,

year after year, until an eradication method is discovered!

We asked divers what would motivate them. The overwhelming answer wasn’t

tournaments or bounty per fish; it was earned out of season fishing privileges.

Cost vs. Benefit Analysis

At the 2013 FWC Lionfish Summit, REEF®, funded by

the FWC, presented their finding of a single lionfish

with 65 native species undigested in its stomach

contents. Obviously, 100 mature lionfish could eat

6,500 native fish in one day! After 3 decades

without any population control measures, reefs are

being overrun by lionfish that reproduce every 2-4

days and eat our native fish at unsustainable rates. We could SAVE up to 6,500 Juvinile Native

Fish by sacrificing 10 adult Native fish.

www.REEF.org

This is great news! Using

our native fish as a motivator requires almost no financial investment making this plan financially sustainable. We can motivate thousands of divers to aggressively target the lionfish year-round and produce immediate, impressive, measurable and consistant results.

100 Lionfish removed by

Divers at their own risk and

expense

Fish & Wildlife rewards

divers with 10 Fish tags of

Divers' Choice

Divers remain motivated to aggressively

target lionfish year-round

Simple and Affordable Plan

1. Dive Shops, Non-profits, or FWC Law Enforcement act

as turn-in locations with freezers to store LF heads

until the FWC or Sea Grant can conduct monthly or

intermittent audits of the lionfish heads.

2. Divers turning in 100 lionfish heads are rewarded with

10 fish tags of their choice which can used year round. (Tags issued by State and/or Federal Fishery Management

Agencies and distributed by State or by Turn-in locations)

3. Only two tags of any single species could be used per

trip. Example: only 2 red snappers tags could be used

per trip, in or out of season, but if they also had

Grouper tags, they could take a maximum of 2

groupers on that trip plus 2 snappers.

Benefits Financially Sustainable Long-term Population

Control

Encourages Massive, year-round LF Removals

Divers will be encouraged to continuously kill

lionfish in order to earn more tags. (Win-Win

Environment & Economy)

Allowing divers to choose tags for the species of

their choice increases motivation and minimizes

pressure on any specific fish stock.

Fish tags allow fishery managers to keep an exact

count of lionfish removed from the water and an

exact count of each adult species awarded to

divers who are saving our fishery at their own

expense and risk.

Plan provides immediate and measurable results. Photo by: Lori Quick

* Assume ½ are female

Tournaments

Tournaments do remove large quantities of lionfish, but as

soon as the prizes are awarded, the motivation to

aggressively target the lionfish ends.

Divers leave large populations of lionfish on reefs to

improve their chances of winning tournaments that may be

held only once a year. Lionfish are left to breed every 2-4

days creating a larger problem.

Participation in lionfish tournaments is low because most

spearfishers know their chance of winning is slim because

LF tournaments are won by divers with their own boats and

those most skilled at targeting this dangerous fish.

The cost and work involved in running lionfish tournaments

is not sustainable unless Fishery Management Agencies

begin budgeting to cover the expenses. In 2014, the FWC

offered up to $9K in grants to REEF® to help fund their

derbies but Florida cannot afford to fund derbies statewide

or indefinitely. This money is gone, yet the crisis grows.

Private businesses cannot afford to fund fishery

management indefinitely and neither the state nor federal

Government has enough money to pay never ending

bounties. Tournaments are just short term bounty

programs. No one has the money or energy to host year-

round tournaments, but the lionfish eats and reproduces

year round insuring our fishery will continue to be in Crisis!

Tournaments are great for public awareness, but without

easily attained /generous funding, continuous lionfish

derbies are not sustainable and will NOT Save our Fishery.

Commercialization

Red Snapper is valued at approximately $3.00 per pound at

the fish house and the preferred size is 13 inches.

Commercially, native fish are caught economically on hook

and line by surface fishermen. Lionfish rarely bite hooks.

The cost and danger of harvesting and cleaning lionfish is

much higher. Divers have limited bottom time, they risk

getting painful stings, they risk sharks attracted to blood,

and repetitive diving increases the danger of getting bent.

(Largest population clusters of LF are found @ depths of

100’+ in the Panhandle of FL)

A female lionfish becomes sexually mature at about 7

inches and the Male at about 4 inches. By putting a

commercial value on the lionfish, we are encouraging

divers to leave small lionfish to breed for 1-3 years in order

for the lionfish to become commercially viable. During

those years, female LF release up to 2 million eggs each,

per year.

By attaching a monetary value to commercially viable

lionfish, we encourage divers to protect profits over

protecting the native fishery. This is a serious flaw in the

commercialization idea as a way to save our fishery.

Trapping is the only way to make harvesting commercially

viable but traps have unintentional by-catch that may

exceed the intended target, lionfish.

To successfully control the population, we must motivate

as many divers as possible to take all lionfish off reefs, not

only those that are a commercially viable size.

Adopt-a-Reef Concept – A fine idea to adopt

specific reefs and keep them cleaned of lionfish.

This will take commitment and funding as volunteers

quickly tire of cleaning up when they see no

personal benefit for their costly, risky and time

consuming effort. Look at the “Adopt-a-Highway”

Program, ever notice how when the highway is first

adopted it is cleaned nicely but, over time, the road

becomes littered and nobody shows up to clean it?

That’s because after people do un-compensated

work and see it’s never ending, most will give up.

Identifying “Vital” reefs… well, if you could ask

the marine life that lives on any reef, they would say

their reef is vital to them. As a matter of fact, all

reefs play an important role in the health and

sustainability of our fishery.

Reefs are the marine equivalent to our land based

communities. Every structure has a purpose and is

vital to those who depend on those structures.

To give you a good analogy of what these programs

would be like, let’s look at Miami. Now, choose

around 50 buildings to save knowing that all the rest

will be destroyed. How long do you think Miami

would remain a viable city? How long would the

remaining buildings be able to sustain the rest of the

displaced people? You can’t save a hand full of reefs

and expect the fishery to be saved either.

We need to launch an all out war on lionfish and to

do that; we need an army of motivated divers

removing LF from thousands of reefs, year-round.

Emerald Coast Reef Assoc Reef: Photo by: Keith Mille, FWC Google Earth Image of a small section of Miami

According to historical data on the FWC website, the invasion started with just a handful of lionfish first spotted off

the coast of Dania, Florida in 1985. The U.S.G.S map of year 2000 shows lionfish migrating up the Atlantic Coast

via ocean currents. By 2006, the entire eastern coast was involved. This is also when the first lionfish was spotted

in the Gulf of Mexico. By this time, our tax funded scientists knew the lionfish was a serious threat, yet Fishery

Managers took no action to control the population, slow the migration, or warn Florida Coastal Counties or Gulf

States of the impending threat. In 2008, the FWC published “Wildlife 2060: What’s at Stake for Florida?” ... again,

there was no mention of the loinfish. By 2014, the entire Gulf of Mexico and Caribean were threatened. It is now

2015, three decades since our State and Federal Fishery Management Agencies began monitoring and

documenting this invasion, and still, they have never attempted to control the lionfish population or directed our

tax funded scientists to search for an environmentally safe and effective erradication method. Look at the maps;

If we continue to delay taking aggressive and effective action, our fishery will collapse and our Coastal

Economies will suffer damage in the Billions of Dollars, annually. Who will take responsibility for that outcome?

To have a very clear understanding why Aggressive Year-Round Removal is Critical,

Let’s look at the offspring capability of just 1 breeding female lionfish:

* Realistically, not all eggs will be viable and not all fry will will survive to reproductive age but, the FWC says

the entire invasion began with just a handful of lionfish. Obviously, the survival rate is very high. This is how

the lionfish successfully invaded the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in less than 3 decades, and why

we must act with urgency now, before it’s too late! The lionfish are eating our native fish at unsustainable

rates. Our only hope is to remove trillions of lionfish from the water as quickly as possible and hope the

scientific community will re-focus their efforts and develop an eradication method.

We must take immediate and meaningful action to Save our Fishery!

1985-1991 2000 2006 2010 2014

Maps by: U.S. Geological Survey

http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/SpeciesAnimatedMap.aspx?speciesID=963

While all these actions are good, when you look at the invasion curve chart below it is obvious

that these actions were taken decades past when they would have been most effective.

The invasion map below shows the result of failure to control the LF Population for 3 decades.

What management action is missing? A Financially Sustainable, Aggressive Population Control Program!

2014 - FWC

Prevention Measures

Prohibited importation of lionfish into State

Prohibiting the intentional breeding of captive LF

Prohibited possession of LF eggs & larvae for any

purpose other than destruction

Containment Measure

Removed the prohibition on spearing LF using a

re-breather, in state waters

Management Measures

Hired 1 new employee to start a LF Educational

Outreach Program

2013 - FWC

Management Measures

FWC sponsored Lionfish Summit

Made their first ever legislative request for

funding to manage the LF crisis. Asked for and

received $150K

2012 - FWC

Containment Measures

Removed Fishing License Requirement to kill LF

Removed Daily Catch Limit on LF

2014

1985-2014 U.S.G.S. Documented the Population Explosion and Migration

of the lionfish

Control Costs, 30 years into this crisis, are too high to

be viable. This is why our only financially sustainable

answer is to trade 10 native fish for 100 lionfish, until

scientists can come up with an eradication method.

1. Motivating thousands of divers to aggressively target the lionfish every time

they dive, year round.

In 2015, if we can motivate 1,000 divers in Florida to remove 100 lionfish each,

we would remove 100 Thousand lionfish and up to 100 BILLION Lionfish eggs.

We know that one mature LF can eat up to 65 fish in a single feeding, we could

potentially be saving well over 6.5 MILLION+ of our native species each week

those 100 thousand lionfish are out of our water! Also, those 100 Billion eggs

removed will not be alive to breed at the end of the following year releasing up

to 1 trillion eggs! As participation in the program increases, we can begin to

Control the lionfish population, especially if we encourage other States and

Countries to adopt this program and join the search for an eradication method.

2. Encourage Improved Trap Designs and testing and, remove regulatory

barriers to trapping in waters that are too deep for recreational divers.

3. Change the focus of scientific research away from problem documentation to

problem solving... ERADICATION!

To save our fishery, we desperately need an environmentally safe eradication

method. Three decades into the problem, none of our Tax funded agencies

has ever directed researchers to look for a way to eradicate the lionfish.

For an in-depth outline of how to affordably and

successfully implement this population control plan, to

ask questions or, to join The Emerald Coast Reef

Association in their efforts to encourage our State

and Federal regulators to take swift and aggressive

action to Save our Fishery, please contact:

Candy Hansard Candy@ecreef.org President, Emerald Coast Reef Association

P.O. Box 273 ~ Niceville, FL 32588

Printed January 2015