>>NARRATOR: In the waters of the western Atlantic

and Caribbean, a voracious alien predator has taken hold.

>>We have never before seen a marine invasion

of this magnitude or this scale.

>>NARRATOR: Lionfish are indigenous to the Indo-Pacific.

>>They've evolved over many thousands of years

in a complicated system where everything had time to work out

its place and its controlling mechanisms.

>>NARRATOR: Not so in the Atlantic,

where this invasive species is a major threat

to biodiversity and the health

of already stressed coral reef ecosystems.

>>The biggest concern we have is lionfish predation

on other marine life.

They're a voracious, gluttonous feeder.

They're an ambush predator,

and they're very uniquely camouflaged,

so they can sneak up very close to their prey,

and our prey here in this range have not evolved with lionfish

and don't see them as a predator.

One of the key findings of the research

that we've been doing here in the Bahamas is that lionfish

have likely reduced fish populations

on many of these reefs by up to 90% in the last four years.

It's a free-for-all for lionfish right now.

No predators, lots of food.

Just a kid in a candy store.

The million-dollar question

is "what are we going to do about this?"

>>Major funding for this program was provided

by the Batchelor Foundation,

encouraging people to preserve and protect

America's underwater resources.

>>NARRATOR: They are stunning fish,

with striking stripes and long, flamboyant fins.

Native to the Indo-Pacific and Red Sea,

Lionfish are members of the scorpion fish family.

>>Lionfish are very popular aquarium fish,

and they are sold in very large numbers in the United States.

They're very ornate, beautiful fish.

They tend to eat a lot, and they eat the other aquarium fish--

some of the expensive aquarium fish.

>>Lionfish will outgrow an aquarium in many cases.

Also, the expense of keeping

an aquarium can be price-inhibitive.

So what happens is, the people run out of money

to maintain their aquarium, and they, rather than bring

the fish back to the pet store,

they just release them into the wild.

>>And some of those fish got together and began to reproduce.

>>NARRATOR: Experts believe they can trace the origins

of this invasion to South Florida,

where the first lionfish were spotted in the wild.

>>Actually, 1985 in Miami was the first record.

And then a very few records in the early and mid-'90s as well.

There is a popular myth that Hurricane Andrew

destroyed a bayfront aquarium in South Florida, in Miami,

but it's all second- and third-hand information.

It's never been proven.

And the genetics don't really support that.

Even if that bayfront aquarium was destroyed,

we know that there are more than just those

few fish involved in the invasion.

>>NARRATOR: While the invasion was likely caused by more fish

than what could have escaped the aquarium,

genetic testing has traced the massive invasion

back to around nine fish on the maternal line.

>>That's looking like, you know, a very small number

of fish that started this whole invasion.

>>NARRATOR: The U.S. Geological Survey

keeps track of all the confirmed lionfish sightings

on a detailed map.

>>Starting in the late '90s,

we began to see an increase up the east coast of Florida.

And then in 2000, up into the Southeast U.S.: Georgia,

South Carolina, North Carolina and Bermuda out in the Atlantic.

>>NARRATOR: The Gulf Stream carried the lionfish eggs

and larvae northward, allowing the fish

to establish themselves along the East Coast

of the United States.

Only the colder temperatures of the northern Atlantic

have kept the animals from taking hold in the Northeast.

>>We do know that the thermal tolerance for lionfish

is about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, 12 degrees Centigrade.

But even with that thermal tolerance,

every summer, lionfish, during the warm months,

make it as far north as Rhode Island, Massachusetts

and New York.

Obviously in the wintertime, it's too cold for those fish

to survive, so they don't make it.

>>NARRATOR: But the invasion didn't stop there.

>>There is an eddy of the Gulf Stream

that kind of peels into the Bahamas

between Grand Bahama and Bimini, and even though

there's not a lot of connectivity

between the Bahamas and the Florida coast,

there's enough through that eddy that some of the eggs

were entrained and dropped over in the Bahamas,

and once those fish began to reproduce

in this very abundant, diverse habitat, they really took hold.

The first fish showed up in the Bahamas in 2004,

and then the spread moved southward to Turks and Caicos,

Hispaniola, Cuba and then westward-- Jamaica, Cayman,

Central America, and now it's following down

the South American coast.

>>NARRATOR: Lionfish are also spreading

into the Gulf of Mexico, and after all these years

are showing up in increasing numbers in South Florida.

>>So the dispersal we see in this distribution is due

to fish in one area reproducing, and their eggs and larvae

being carried in the currents to a new area

where those fish begin to mature.

And along the east coast of Florida,

we have the Gulf Stream current moving north,

so fish in South Florida were reproducing, but their eggs

and larvae were being carried north

and there was no additional supply

into that South Florida population.

So fish to the South of us in Cuba, Mexico, Belize

are reproducing, and their eggs and larvae

are making it into South Florida.

So even though this all started in South Florida,

it took about a decade or so for us to start to see

the effects full circle.

>>NARRATOR: Lad Akins, who works for the nonprofit

Reef Environmental Education Foundation

based out of Key Largo, Florida, has done a lot of research

on the lionfish invasion.

Together with Stephanie Green, a marine ecologist

from Simon-Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada,

he is conducting a number of research projects

in the Bahamas.

>>The Bahamas definitely are ground zero

for the lionfish invasion.

>>NARRATOR: The island chain's tropical waters and coral reefs

make it an ideal habitat for lionfish.

On the island of Eleuthera, Lad and Stephanie are conducting

a number of different studies to better understand

how the lionfish affect local marine habitats,

and what might be done to alleviate those impacts.

>>We have a giant experiment set up in Rock Sound,

which is this really large body of water that is

extremely similar habitat,

about ten feet deep all the way across,

with these almost perfect little replicated coral heads

every few hundred meters, and that essentially

is the perfect playground in which to do this experiment.

We've taken 24 of those reefs and we've divided them

into four different treatments.

A number of those reefs, we have taken all the lionfish

off of-- we're not leaving any.

And then, we have two treatments where we've left a few lionfish,

numbers that we've predicted to have a low probability

of impact, and also a high probability of impact

on the fish communities.

And then the remainder of the reefs

we're using as essentially a scientific control.

We're not removing lionfish from those reefs,

but we are monitoring what changes over time.

And essentially, we can compare the reefs

where we've manipulated lionfish numbers-- removed them--

to those reefs where they remain,

to see what differences occur.

>>NARRATOR: Lad and Stephanie are working closely with experts

from the Cape Eleuthera Institute, who helped them

set up their experiment in late 2009.

Now they are monitoring the project

when Lad and Stephanie aren't there.

>>I've been heading out monthly and checking in

on those reefs and conducting surveys.

>>When we first started this work,

we conducted very detailed baseline inventories

of those sites, the coral cover,

the relief of the site off the bottom.

We count every single little fish and size every single fish

on those reefs along a transect line.

So we can get the amount of fish per square meter of reef,

as well as counting how many lionfish and determining

the size of the lionfish.

And all that is put into a pretty sophisticated model

that spits out, based on lionfish consumption,

how many lionfish we believe that reef can support

based on the available food.

And that's what's directing the different treatments.

>>NARRATOR: The scientists are hoping

to answer a number of different questions.

>>What we want to find out is how many lionfish

a reef can support without having dramatic impacts

to the marine life on that site.

And, if you remove lionfish from a site that's had

a lot of lionfish, will the marine life come back?

And really, that's going to direct control efforts.

If you know that you can still have one or two lionfish

on a reef without having negative impacts,

well, that will change the way you look at removal efforts.

>>NARRATOR: The scientists use two main methods

to collect the lionfish.

>>One of them is hand nets,

designed for the aquarium industry,

where they live capture

their fish for aquarium exhibits or resale.

And the hand nets tend to work very, very well,

especially for the smaller lionfish.

In heavily invaded areas where you have very large lionfish,

and a lot of them, spearing can also be effective.

Lionfish aren't a fast moving fish,

and they're a perfect candidate for successful spearing.

>>Divers need to use caution as they capture the animals,

since their spines contain a potent venom.

>>It can provide a very painful sting, and in rare cases

more severe complications.

It's a neurotoxin venom-- protein-based.

So we tend to avoid stings by wearing protective gloves,

puncture-proof gloves which are actually used

in the hospital industry to prevent needle sticks.

If, however, someone is stung by a lionfish,

treatment is pretty basic.

Basically, immersion in hot water of the affected area

starts to break down the protein base of the venom

and relieves the pain at the same time.

>>NARRATOR: Once the fish are caught and brought back to land,

the researchers analyze the animals' stomach contents

to see what native species the lionfish prey on.

>>Oh, squirrel fish.

This is the last thing that a lot of fish see.

And they swallow their prey whole, and then their stomachs

are really acidic, so it breaks the fish or crustaceans down

really, really quickly.

There are no teeth involved.

They are what we call a gape-limited predator,

so anything that is small enough to fit in their mouths

they can consume, and it tends to be fish or other prey

that are up to half their total size sometimes.

We found lionfish with the tails of their prey sticking back out

of their throat still.

And they really are a gluttonous feeder.

Their stomach can expand up to 30 times its normal size

when they're eating.

And so basically, the fact that it can consume a wide array

of species, and they can consume such large prey,

really means that they have the capacity to do a lot of damage.

And so we have got the liver here, stomach.

We'll take the stomach out.

We've been sending off a lot of samples like this,

that we can't tell the species, for DNA analysis so that

we get a species identification.

We've documented over 50 species of reef fishes in the stomach,

as well as crustaceans and all sorts of other critters.

They are really hitting the reef quite hard on all fronts--

things that grow up to be large as adults but also things

that stay really small.

I am not really aware of any other predator

that eats so broadly.

>>NARRATOR: There are several reasons why lionfish numbers

have exploded in the Atlantic.

For one, the animals reproduce frequently.

>>Lionfish reach maturity at a very small size,

a very young age, so very quickly in their life

they're able to reproduce.

And they're pair spawners, so a single male

and a single female get together and reproduce.

And in warmer climates like South Florida and the islands--

the Caribbean and the Bahamas--

lionfish can reproduce throughout the year.

>>We'll open it up, and I'll show you guys this.

This entire thing is one ovary-- they have two of them.

All these tiny little spots, each of them is an egg.

So some work that has been done up at the NOAA lab

in North Carolina shows that there are up to 30,000 eggs

in one spawn, and that this is happening

every four to six days in the Caribbean year round.

So that is one reason why they are so successful

in establishing all over the place.

>>NARRATOR: Another reason why lionfish have inundated

the western Atlantic and Caribbean is the fact

that they have no known predators or parasites

in this part of the world.

>>They can put a lot more energy into growth

and reproduction.

And we see lionfish here in the Atlantic and Caribbean

much larger than they're known to grow in their native range.

Native range maximum size is reported to be

about 35 centimeters.

And here, we're finding lionfish almost half a meter in length,

and that is a big, big lionfish.

>>NARRATOR: To better understand how lionfish

move and grow, the scientists are tagging them

on those study sites where they haven't been captured.

>>We tag them underwater rather than bringing them

to the surface, which could cause some barotrauma,

pressure change injuries on the fish,

and would require anesthetizing the fish,

and it would be a very lengthy, detailed process.

The process is a little bit tricky.

You're dealing with a live fish on the bottom

with venomous spines.

It involves using a small strip of plastic

attached to a sewing needle.

This thin plastic strip is called a Floy streamer tag,

and it has a serial number and contact information,

and we put that right through

the base of the tail of the fish.

And the hope is we can revisit some of the sites

that we tagged fish and adjacent reef areas,

and see if we can recapture those fish at a later date

to get that movement and growth information.

And the information that we're getting

out of these tagging studies is vitally important

to designing control programs that will be effective.

And when we do re-collect the fish after the tagging,

at the end of the research, we don't let them go again.

>>NARRATOR: To do all this time-intensive work,

Lad and Stephanie rely heavily on the help of volunteers

who assist in their efforts.

>>And we were doing all sorts of stuff,

whether it was helping hold the bags,

literally to physically collect the lionfish

to once they've been tagged, then we would take them back

to their original site and let them go.

>>The volunteers have been extremely crucial

in a couple of ways to the lionfish research.

Through using volunteers, you can collect a large amount

of scientific data that normally you wouldn't be able to,

because researchers don't have a lot of money or time.

>>To me, it's just my little part

trying to eradicate a problem.

That's my whole desire, and I hope other people

out there have the same feelings I do and jump onboard to help.

>>NARRATOR: As part of their research,

the scientists have observed

all kinds of interesting behavior,

including this video Lad shot

of two lionfish fighting for dominance.

>>Lionfish are related to the scorpion fish,

and all scorpion fish have a pretty bony head,

and we've seen aggressive posturing between male lionfish,

and they use these bony cheeks up against each other's sides

to kind of rake along the side when they are having

a little tiff, trying to determine

who is the dominant male for spawning with females.

>>Scientists say there's still a lot they need to learn

about lionfish-- such as how old they get

and at what depths they can live.

>>The depth ranges of lionfish we know are as shallow

as inches deep up against the shoreline, and we don't know

the maximum depth yet, but we know at least as deep

as 500 feet.

A report from a submarine saw lionfish that deep.

>>NARRATOR: The one thing experts do know

is that these animals present a major threat

to the biodiversity and ecosystem health of this region.

>>The spread since 2007 has been more dramatic

than any of us could have imagined.

So rapid, so intense.

The population has exploded in areas that have become invaded.

>>And we're finding in many instances that lionfish

have likely reduced populations by up to 90%

in just four short years since colonizing the area.

So we've seen huge reductions in the numbers of fish,

also potentially in diversity, and so the impacts of these fish

are profound.

>>NARRATOR: At this time, removal of the lionfish

seems to be the only solution to this growing problem.

>>Eradication is not likely going to be possible,

based on what we know right now.

But we can control populations to a level that the impacts

may be minimized.

And right now that's a major, major goal.

And we know we are the ultimate at being able

to wipe out marine life.

Wipe out fish stocks.

But we have to have that incentive to do it.

And that incentive is money.

I think developing a market for lionfish

is a very smart way to go.

And for larger lionfish, that market is a food market.

>>They really are a delicious fish, and that's probably

one of the saving graces of this whole invasion

is the fact that you can actually consume them

and that they taste so good.

>>So good.

>>NARRATOR: Lionfish taste similar to hogfish and snapper,

and the meat can be prepared in a variety of ways.

Nutritional studies have shown that lionfish

are actually higher in omega 3s

than some of the more common food fish,

and efforts are currently underway to develop

a commercial market for lionfish.

>>Bermuda has developed a slogan.

They say "eat 'em to beat 'em."

And I really think that's a good way to go.

>>NARRATOR: To make catching the animals more efficient,

the researchers are testing out a variety of different traps.

>>We're trying a few different trap designs

and a few different baiting schemes to see if we can design

something that would be effective for lionfish

but not have a lot of other bycatch

and not impact the other fish species as well.

We actually have been able to catch some lionfish

in our traps, but the amount of bycatch that we caught

during that same trapping scheme was just too high

to be really considered an effective removal.

So we've adjusted some of our trapping treatments,

and we're trying a few different things now--

putting escape panels into the traps.

And we'll just keep at it to see if we can come up

with an effective design for lionfish.

Maybe we can't.

Maybe bycatch is always going to be too high,

but that's something that we need to know.

Diver removals can be very effective where they can dive,

but you can't dive everywhere.

But fishermen can deploy traps in a wide range of areas.

So if we can have that effective trap design,

we think we can engage the fishing community.

>>NARRATOR: In an effort to get the public involved

in capturing the fish,

the Reef Environmental Education Foundation and its partners

began organizing fishing tournaments,

or "Derbies," in the Bahamas in 2009.

Since then, the Derbies have caught on in other areas,

including the Florida Keys.

>>Basically what the derby's goal is is to raise awareness

about lionfish, and also dispel some of the rumors

that the meat is venomous.

>>Coming out as early as 6:30 AM sunrise.

>>NARRATOR: Cash prizes are offered

as incentives for fishermen to participate.

>>Oh, yeah, they did pretty well.

>>150.

>>We have "most lionfish per boat,"

and then we also have "largest lionfish,"

and we do "smallest lionfish" too,

unlike other spearfishing tournaments.

You can use a spear, you can use nets--

whatever method of collection you like.

The most lionfish of the entire derby,

with 111 lionfish, is Raw Talent.

(cheers)

These derbies, though, the main purpose of them

is to raise awareness and get people involved

in collecting lionfish, and also we have a big cookout

at the end of the derby and people get to try lionfish

and taste for themselves how delicious they are.

And as long as people have incentive to harvest,

they will harvest.

>>NARRATOR: Much is being done to raise awareness

of the lionfish invasion, and to figure out ways

to halt the problem.

While certain areas in the Bahamas are already overrun

with lionfish, experts hope that it is not too late

to keep this from happening in other parts of the invaded range

where the animals are just now beginning to establish.

>>Why not just let this run its course?

Let it become part of the system, and, you know,

it will assimilate and everything will find its way

to work out.

And that's a very valid question.

I understand the question, and the viewpoint

that some people may have along those lines.

However, this is not a natural occurrence.

This is a man-made occurrence.

It's, in effect, biological pollution that we're seeing.

And it's up to us to fix the problem.

If we let it run its own course, our native species,

who are not at fault, are the ones that are going

to pay the price, and we will ultimately pay

the price following that.

And I think that's a good enough reason

for us to really want to address

this invasion and remove lionfish.

>>This really is a region-wide threat that's potentially

one of the worst ecological disasters

that the Caribbean could face.

But really, it's also a huge opportunity for us

to be proactive on a conservation issue.

I think humans have made

a history out of not being proactive when it comes

to conservation, when it comes to understanding the problems

that are out there and doing something about them

before they really take over a system.

A lot of marine conservation you're telling people,

"Don't do this, don't do that, don't go here, don't go there."

With lionfish we're saying, "Yes, do get involved!

"Do go out and fish for them.

Do eat them."

And I think that is really a benefit,

if there is anything to be optimistic about

is the fact that you can bring people together on this.

>>Major funding for this program was provided

by the Batchelor Foundation,

encouraging people to preserve and protect

America's underwater resources.