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 [email protected] President, Emerald Coast Reef Association
P.O. Box 273 ~ Niceville, FL 32588
Printed January 2015
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