Bonefish on the Brain Bonefish and all that relates (maybe a bit about tarpon too).

Have you ever seen a lionfish?

They are really very beautiful. Their stripes and fluttering, venomous fins… they look like they belong to be on display.

They also belong in the Indo-Pacific, not in the Caribbean. Sadly, they are in both places. Now, it seems like they may even been in the deep Atlantic.

That’s not good for a couple of reasons. First, you can’t exactly get a bunch of divers out to cleanse the deep… 300 feet is not a practical depth to do that. Second, if you can get rid of lion fish on the reefs, but they still exist in large numbers just offshore, well, they’ll come back to the reefs.

This is going to be a long and nasty fight.

The only good Lion Fish… yup… a dead one.

I was watching Buccaneers and Bones from the ole DVR last night. It is a good show… I like it.  It isn’t a young crowd, really, with Yvon and Tom Brokaw and the rest of the crew, but they are fun to watch anyway. They are fishing places I want to fish and I’m pretty sure I’d enjoy a day on the water with any of them… especially Aaron Adams who heads the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust.

I was pleased to see, again, the conservation message. They not only talked about safe handling of bonefish when there are sharks around, but they also talked about the threat of the invasive Lion Fish.

If you are not aware, Lion Fish are little fuquers.  They are invasive, coming from the Pacific, and they are voracious predators capable of eating ALL the juvenile  fish on a small reef. The native fish just don’t recognize them as predators and they end up in the bellies of the beautiful, but deadly Lions.

In this particular episode Yvon Chouinard goes out with Deep Water Cay’s dive master, Molly Brady… with the bonus video of Molly swimming in a bikini, which might make even the Trout Underground appreciate the virtues of the tropics.

Happy to see Lion Fish getting their time in the spotlight… and then their time on the spear tip.