As much as we all like to take the trophy fish from the reef areas, it seems like we should have a Lionfish Killfest every year to help the reefs continue to be productive and healthy. The Lionfish tourney in jacksonville does serious work on the lionfish population in a 1 day tourney. This could be for fisherman and for divers yet obviously the divers will have a higher yield. Here is a video link of the top guy in the Jax tournament this year. His tally for 1 day was 168 lionfish!
Would there be an interest in this from local divers/fisherman? I would be happy to get it organized with prizes and etc if enough people were interested in this. Please respond with any/all thoughts/criticism
They are delicious to eat but more importantly, they are very destructive for the reef system and eat 6-10x their weight in small fish every day. They have few predators and I know of many spots getting crushed by them. I have seen a few in the 6-8lb range diving.
Thanks Phin for the interest. Hopefully we can get at least 15-20 people interested.
BTW, a certain sporting goods chain (name unmentioned) sells a line of very popular printed tee shirts (again, name unmentioned) with the lionfish being speared by a tri-tip pole spear.
Count me in - I would be GLAD to help in any way I can - even being a little land-locked in Columbia . . . LOL
That was a cool video. Those things don’t seem to be scared of anything.
If we do it around here, who’s going to give the numbers on the most infested areas? And please take some pictures video for people like me that are too paranoid of sharks to attempt an off shore dive.
