Spear Fishing

The red lionfish is an invasive species that has caused terrible problems for the ecology of reefs throughout the Caribbean. This fish is native to the Pacific and was introduced to the Caribbean by pet owners that no longer wanted their fish and dumped them in the ocean off southern Florida. Over the last 30 years, they have spread like wildfire to every part of the Caribbean basin. They have no predators here, and are themselves voracious predators and have decimated fish populations.

Red lionfish under the dock at Ramon's Village Resort

There is a fairly well organized, concerted effort to educate the public about this problem and to promote the only strategy that seems to work--killing them, one at a time.

We've heard so much about the problem, and seen enough lionfish ourselves, that when Liam got some money from his grandparents for Christmas, he decided to spend some of it on a type of spear called a Hawaiian sling. The sling works by looping the thick elastic band on the end around your thumb, pulling the sling back, and holding it in place until you are ready to "shoot" it at a fish. It takes a fair amount of strength to hold it in that position, but Liam was very determined and eventually figured it out.

Liam on the prowl for lionfish

We went searching for lionfish off the Caribbean Villas dock, and had great success in locating them--we saw about 8! However, they like to hide in nooks and crannies amongst the various bits of detritus the resorts have placed near the piers as artificial reefs, and consequently, it is hard to get a clean shot. The other thing we discovered is that even if you hit them, unless it is a killing shot, they will wriggle off the spear. The way to keep them on the spear is to pin them against a rock, piling, or even the sea floor until you can reload the sling and shoot it again to run it further through their body.

The first lionfish!

Eventually Liam was successful in spearing the first fish. It was just a tiny one, but tiny fish become big fish. As we were looking for more, we saw a local boy named Kevin fishing under the dock with a hand line and a homemade hook. He was not having much luck. He was fishing under the dock because there are hundreds and hundreds of fish, most of them blue-strped grunts, but also some snapper, sargeant majors, sailors choice, chubs, and many others. I speared a grunt and gave it to Kevin, and later managed to spear a sailor's choice, which I also gave to him.

Blue-striped grunt

Another view of the grunt

Eventually I found and successfully speared a small lionfish too. It was surprisingly satisifying to kill something with a pointy stick, and I actually felt a bit guilty about enjoying it. However, I have to believe there is some part of our animal mind that evolved to do exactly that, so perhaps it should not be too surprising to feel a sense of satisifcation after successfully completing a task that our brains and bodies evolved to do.

A day's catch

Liam with the largest lionfish yet, speared under the Caribbean Villas dock

Cleaned and scaled fish--the fish on the left is the lionfish, which I skinned completely

Fried grunt, just about ready for the tortilla

On a subsequent trip, Liam speared two lionfish, one of which was big enough to eat. We speared three decent sized grunts between the two of us, and we cleaned, scaled, cooked, and ate them in some fish burritos. The lionfish was surprisingly tasty--I'm obviously not much of a fish eater, but I thought it tasted quite good and I can understand why restaurants here on the island have it on their menus.