The lionfish, originally from the South Pacific, is threatening to destroy the biodiversity around Colombia's Rosario Islands in the Caribbean, and now the need to halt its proliferation there has turned it into a dinnertime delicacy.
This invasive species – also known as zebrafish, firefish, turkeyfish or butterfly-cod – reached Colombia four years ago, swallowing every edible thing in its path and reproducing wildly up and down the Atlantic coasts of the United States, Mexico and Central American countries.
In an attempt to preserve the protected ecosystem of Rosario Islands, located an hour away by speedboat from Cartagena, commercial scuba-diving operations in the area like Diving Planet are trying to eliminate, or at least reduce, this predator by following a model successfully applied at Washington Slagbaai National Park on Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles.
Nestor Junior Ramírez is the Diving Planet expert on hunting lionfish – a meticulous process undertaken with a hand-held harpoon while wearing a diving suit which is complicated by the poison the fish accumulate in their spiky dorsal fins.
Read the full story at Fox News Latino >>
Read more about lionfish >>
