BEAUTYAND THE BEAST
Each year, thousands of lionfish are sold in the ornamental fish trade. Chances are you might have seen one in a restaurant or corporate waiting- room aquarium. There’s no denying that a lionfish hovering in a saltwater tank is eye-catching. Perhaps that’s why most people’s first response to the lionfish invasion is, “Great! Now I don’t have to travel a thousand miles to see one in the wild.”
But, take a look beyond the undu- lating fins and dramatically colored skin, and you find a biological beast: one that can produce 2 million eggs a year, releasing batches every four days over a very long spawning season. Worse yet, newly hatched lionfish are able to reproduce within one year.
You will find a creature with a vora- cious appetite and a stomach that can expand so much it will eat prey almost as long as itself. Studies reveal more than 50 species of native fish and invertebrates, including snapper and grouper, occur in the stomachs of lionfish now inhabiting the Atlantic and Caribbean.
Most disturbing, you discover the lionfish has no natural predators in its new home. Laboratory studies have shown that large grouper shy away from even small lionfish. Perhaps some combination of scent, color and shape triggers an instinctual warning bell in normally aggressive predators? Put it all together, and you have a recipe for ecological disaster. Throughout the Atlantic and
Caribbean, researchers are finding disturbing evidence of this eco- logical disaster. Natural reefs are being systematically depopulated of their natural fish and invertebrate fauna.
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