Utila celebrated its first lionfish derby and cookoff!    Organized by Bay Islands Conservation Association (BICA) and Utila Center for Marine Ecology (UCME), with the involvement of multiple dive shops and other community members, this was a great first-time event.   Date of the catching derby was Friday, April 29th.  Teams were organized through the  dive shops, with  22 teams of four people participating. This resulted in 429 lionfish killed in just one day!  Lionfish are a highly invasive species in the Caribbean. Their presence and detrimental effects throughout the Caribbean, including Belize, and Bay Islands, have been well documented.  An “invasive species” means not only that the species was introduced to the area (in this case, “area” meaning the Caribbean at large;  the introduction likely being accidental  through aquariums in Florida and Bahamas), but ALSO that the introduced species has harmful impacts on the native species.   In the case of lionfish, they are native to Indian and Pacific oceans, but here, they have no substantial active predators, and they aggressively destroy the local fish populations. (Some preliminary research is being done on shark and grouper predation on lionfish, however the predation seems to be on an individual case by case basis and not at the levels needed to actively control lionfish populations- though that may change in the future.)    Read More