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Old 03-29-2008, 02:27 PM
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ricki ricki is offline
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Still more info ...

Re: Coming to a reef near you?

The government was supporting the theory of six individuals that were
bashed out a large aquarium, through a picture window of a home on Key
Biscayne during the storm surge (15 ft.?) of Hurricane Andrew.
Considering how wide spread they area, South Florida (I've yet to see
one here btw) to Long Island, NY over to Bermuda, across the Bahamas,
found out today they've been in the Turks & Caicos for many years* and
may have been seen in Honduras 20 years ago, I think that is
stretching things a bit.

Best guess they love our environment here, have no natural enemies to
speak of (heard a story about a small one being found in the gut of a
grouper, we can hope!) and breed like sea bunnies and they are moving
out. I also heard today about a raft of fry being seen under a matt
of sargassum off Jupiter drifting north.

I have read about the bilge water theory too which has propagated a
number of other serious invasive species. Not sure about that in this
case as some islands like the Caymans with a fair amount of shipping
traffic apparently don't have lionfish yet.

I understand below about 80 ft. they are very common from Melbourne to
points north. They range out to about 250 ft. too.

* Was talking to an UW Photographer at the Delray event today. He has
some outstanding Lionfish shots along with a lot of Pacific
compositions. His lionfish images were all taken in the Turks &
Caicos. He says he has seen lionfish munching normally out of bounds
cleaner fish too, nothing is sacred it seems.

--- In FITGraduates@yahoogroups.com, "Martin Stepanek" <mstepanek@...>
wrote:
>
> WOW!!!! This is a new one to me as well. Is there any widely
accepted theory
> how and why they are here? They are so beautiful but this is not right.
>
>
>
> Martin
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Last edited by ricki; 03-30-2008 at 07:43 PM.
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