Reasons To Kill !

Back in June this year, while in Bocas, I wrote  "Life and Death in the Bay" a pretty typical post from me where I stood on my proverbial soap box and shouted my condemnation of the cruelty in killing the lionfish for sport.  Of course I hadn't waited to discover the actual reasons for the killings, so outraged was I at this new sport, I must add here that I'm not condemning fishing, but the act of killing for fun and then throwing away the creature, it's a waste of a life.
Then yesterday, in England of all places, I discovered that the lionfish which are currently breeding at a rapid rate in the Caribbean, are being hunted and killed because they are devastating the local fish stocks.
Lionfish are not indigenous to the Caribbean, but are flourishing and breeding there in rapid numbers after being released from fish tanks.
The impact the lionfish are having on the fishing community has caused the fishermen to take drastic measures to try and get rid of them.  Personally I think it would be better to try and catch them and put them back in the Pacific, where they originated from, but I realize this is impractical, so at this time killing them seems to be the only option.
The fishermen in Honduras have come up with an ingenious way of attempting to cope with the problem, they claim to have trained sharks to hunt the lionfish.  I don't know if like the way this is done, but needless to say desperate measures are required;  divers wound the lionfish, and this attracts the sharks.  I suppose if sharks eventually start hunting the lionfish naturally, then it would just be nature taking its course.
But I can't help feeling sorry for these poor creatures, even if they are toxic.

Photograph by Antonio Busiello

A grey reef shark chomping down on a spiky, toxic lionfish.