Marine Life Series: Lionfish Invasion

Mark H — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:13:06 -0600

So, what is this Southeast Asian Lionfish doing in Southern New England? Over the past couple of years I've heard rumours that these fish were being spotted off the coasts of New York and New Jersey. One was a claim that someone caught one in a bay on Long Island, and the other was from a fisherman who says he saw one off the coast of New Jersey, drifting among weeds in the Gulf Stream Current.

As we saw in a previous diary, it is not at all uncommon to find the young of fish native to the West Indies and the Caribbean in Rhode Island waters. They are known as "tropical strays" and many different species live here during the late summer and early fall because the eggs or young drifted northward during the spring. These fish die off as soon as the water cools down in late October. But a South Pacific lionfish? That was hard to believe.

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Marine Life Series: Lionfish Invasion