In its native waters of the South Pacific and Indian Ocean, the lionfish lives in a benign balance with the rest of the food chain. But in the Atlantic and Caribbean, where it has been proliferating madly since the early 1990s, the lionfish has no controlling predators. Not even goliath groupers or sharks have developed a taste for them. A lionfish can begin reproducing in the first year of its life and can spawn more than 2 million eggs a year. From birth, the lionfish eats ravenously, its diet made up of the juveniles of key species that help maintain and promote the equilibrium of the reef—snapper, hogfish, parrotfish, banded coral shrimp. In less than 20 years, the lionfish has established a breathtaking colonial empire that ranges all the way from North Carolina to Brazil. In the last two years in particular, it has become a constant menace in Florida Keys reefs. Comprehensive counts are hard to come by, but one local lobsterman reported to the Keynoter that he found more than 100 of them in his traps in a single week. Based on their explosive reproductive rate, researchers estimate that one-quarter of the fish would have to be killed each month to slow their growth.
