What keeps lionfish in check in the indo-pacific?

[immokalee98]

Mike, I'm a native Floridian from Fort Lauderdale and I've never eaten a lionfish (knowingly!). Were you at a restaurant when you ate it?

 

[jcdeng]

they can grow and populate all they want, but eventually, humans will become the lionfish's natural predator. "lionfish sashimi" anyone?

 

[hossa81]

Larger scorpion fish will eat lions.

 

[Luiz Rocha]

Sharks and groupers eat them. My coworker just got back from diving in the caribbean and showed a video of their dive captain spearing multiple lionfish and the groupers were snatching them up.

There is a huge difference between a grouper/shark eating a dead or speared lionfish and a grouper/shark actually hunting one. A large predator (like a grouper/shark) will eat almost anything you offer it if it's dead. Hunting it alive is an entirely different matter. There are no reports of sharks/groupers actively hunting and eating live lionfish in the Caribbean yet.

To make things worse, offering dead or speared lionfish to those predators is only making things work. In places where people do this (offer dead lionfish) often, the predators are becoming used to having hand-outs to a point where they harass divers when no lionfish is offered.

 

[Wolverine]

As mentioned, I've seen videos of sharks, groupers, and larger scorpionfishes eat lionfishes.

I've also seen pics of large anglers eating smaller lionfishes.

 

[billsreef]

Not a peer reviewed article, but interesting nevertheless. It's a review of 2 papers on the subject of grouper predation on lionfish in the Caribbean.

https://peerj.com/preprints/45/

 

[Luiz Rocha]

As mentioned, I've seen videos of sharks, groupers, and larger scorpionfishes eat lionfishes.

I've also seen pics of large anglers eating smaller lionfishes.

I would love to see any of those, especially if it is natural predation and not a diver offering dead Lionfish. Can you PM me some of the links? Thanks!

 

[wii64brawl]

Best known video I think of frogfish predating on lionfish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUNhQ-uF3T4

 

[Luiz Rocha]

Haha, nice one! Doesn't seem like the frogfish liked it too much...

 

[Wolverine]

I would love to see any of those, especially if it is natural predation and not a diver offering dead Lionfish. Can you PM me some of the links? Thanks!

I'll look around to see if I can find any of them. It was years ago.

 

[TruReef]

They have predators here too....
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2216999

 

[Wolverine]

They have predators here too....
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2216999

The last post in that thread is :lol: for multiple reasons.