"About 20 years ago, one of the world’s most beautiful and otherworldly fish, the lion fish, started showing up in south Florida and the Caribbean". While searching through my readings today, I read one article that specifically stuck out from the rest on Carl Safina's blog about Lion Fish. Scientist on the job are saying that there has been a giant invasion of Lion Fish in our Oceans. They say that they came from people letting there aquariums out of the coasts of Florida.

    Lion Fish are very adaptable to any kind of wrecks or reefs in any Ocean. The biggest problem the scientist say they are making is, the fish are coming in and breeding like crazy and eating all of the native reef fish around. The younger Lion's are not so much a problem, but the bigger Lion's (being anywhere from 10' to 15') are making boroughs in the reefs and killing out all of the fish that were there before them.

    The Scientist aren't so much worried about there effect right now, because they have found somewhat positive ways to kill them by gathering volunteers an going on a deep Sea derby to kill a couple thousand of them at at time. The biggest threat the Lion's have on anything is, their effect on humans. An uneducated person could see this fish and try to touch it, but Lion fish are very venomous and have large spines that come off of them that hold poison. They are ranked as one of the most venomous thing in the world, one touch of this fish could kill a human in minutes, especially in deep water or in a scuba diving accident. While the scientist are rounding up people to try and catch these fish, they must be having some worries of how people could get hurt by these massive amounts of fish, especially when they classify them as a "super-predator".
    Now that the Scientist have made it public to hut them and kill them in every reef around, people are now make some money and creating a business out of these fish. People have invested in killing these fish and then, now selling there less than a pound fillets for around $12 dollars. At fish people said that they wouldn't eat it, cause of its harmful poisonous defense systems and mechanisms. People in Florida now have Lion fish venders all over the place and are selling them a lot, because the people say they love them.

   I think that this has a direct relation to the class, because last week we were talking about overpopulation, harm to ecosystems, biodiversity, the way that we effect species, and also ways that invasive species infect our native species as well. There are a couple ways that the Lion fish can be hurtful and harmful to our reefs, but most importantly is them killing the native reef species. They pose a threat to the ecosystem that is in effect on our reef's off Florida coast, if they kill the native fish, they could also kill coral and some bigger fish too. But we must also think about how they could be a part of the ecosystem now, and that the native fish have sort of adapted to there predatory ways. We want to kill the majority of them but, in my personal opinion i don't think we should kill them all cause just like every other native fish, they have become important now too.
Links to Pictures in the post.