S. Heller - Lion Fish Hunter

I can't believe that I haven't written since last Tuesday, but not many noteworthy things have happened.  I am still proceeding through the course work and knocking out some of the 24 skills I will need.  The course work now includes the 5 specialty certifications that I am adding to my Dive Master.  When I am done in November I hope to be certified in Wreck, Deep, Night, Search and Recovery, and Fish Identification.  More books and exams.  And more dives ;-).

I am trying to inject some fun into my days and an opportunity came up to be trained and licensed to kill Lion Fish.  A little history about these pesky critters is, about 5 years ago Atlantis was built in the Bahamas.  A huge resort with an aquarium as it main attraction.  We're talking huge, like it covers the whole resort and contains millions of gallons of seawater.  They have thousands of sea creatures and when they opened they had many mated pairs of Lion Fish.  The sea water is pumped in and filtered to protect the expensive captive creatures from outside pollutants.  But the water is not filtered on the way out.  So they pumped out the spent water and with it Lion Fish eggs.  Now because Lion Fish are not native to this area, they have no natural predators.  They breed like crazy in warm water.  Eat ravenously anything they can find and have multiplied at an alarming rate.  So to try to control the spread, the only thing we are allowed to kill in the marine park is the Lion Fish.  We spear them and either take them to eat or most often we feed them to the larger predator fish in hopes of teaching them to hunt them themselves.  Snapper, Grouper, Shark, Morays all are being fed and it appears that they are learning how good the Lion Fish are.  The meat is quite good and there are many recipes for them here on the island.

Here is a 16 inch Lion Fish caught by the Marine Park guy on a night dive last week.  It so far has won the award for the largest killed.

This is one of my hunting buddies with his first kill. I have yet to get mine, although I have managed to wing a couple and dent the coral around a few.  Something we try not to do.

                                                            007.5  License to kill