“This is an eating machine,” Joseph Gulli said. “He is eating anything and everything he can get in his mouth, nonstop, to the point of regurgitation.”
Mr. Gulli is the president of the Caribbean Oceanic Restoration and Education Foundation. He was speaking about lionfish, the invasive species first found in Virgin Islands waters in March 2010, during a presentation to the Charter Yacht Society last Thursday.
Some fear the voracious predators, originally found in the Pacific Ocean, could devour native marine life and disrupt ecosystems across the territory and the region.
A new VI organisation, called the Reef Guardians, hopes to head them off at the pass.
“It’s a completely invasive species that has no predators whatsoever in the Caribbean or the Atlantic,” said Kate Brunn, one of the group’s founders and the co-owner, with her husband, of Road Town’s UBS Dive Center. “We’ve been very lucky that to a certain extent we are not being infiltrated nearly as much as anybody else.”
The Reef Guardians hope to mobilise divers, fishermen, yacht crews, tourists and anyone else setting foot in the territory’s waters to spot and contain the fish.
See the May 26, 2011 edition for full coverage.