Off the reef and on the menu: fishers in the Caribbean wage war on the invasive lionfish

In Venezuela, tourists and fishing communities are being encouraged to catch and eat the lionfish before it wipes out other speciesBeautiful, dramatically coloured and barbed with venomous spikes, the lionfish not only looks dangerous but is proving to be a grave threat to every other fish in the Caribbean. In Venezuela, William Álvarez, who lives in Chichiriviche de la Costa bay on the Caribbean country's central coast, has made it his business to see off the threat. Each day, he removes them from the water one by one. He is also encouraging tourists and others in the fishing community to catch and eat the lionfish in an effort to control its voracious expansion. The species is decimating herbivorous fish that are important to coral reefs and the livelihoods of coastal communities.A female lionfish can lay up to 30,000 eggs every four days and an estimated 1 to 2m eggs a year Continue reading...