She said not only were adult sharks being overfished preventing them from replenishing dwindling populations by reproducing to create more young, but juveniles were also being caught.
Lionfish a great alternative to shark—Amon
Amon said the prospects of fishermen going after lionfish or another fish alternative instead of shark were great. Amon said lionfish were booming in numbers all over the Caribbean and this was one fish that needed to be fished until it was gone from the region’s reefs. She said removing sharks from our waters had negative implications but removing lionfish will only benefit our already fragile and stressed marine habitats by allowing our native fish to flourish rather than being voraciously eaten by this invasive predator.
Amon said in all the areas where the lionfish proliferated in the Bahamas, reef fish and invertebrates smaller than lionfish were non-existent. She said lionfish eat everything—over two years in the Bahamas, the increases in lionfish coincided with a 65 per cent decline in the 42 species of fish and crustaceans that a lionfish ate. Amon said a recent study has shown that an adult lionfish can consume up to 20 small wrasse fish in 30 minutes.
She said lionfish was lucrative selling for a minimum of $30 (TT) a pound in Florida. Amon said lionfish meat was the perfect trade-off for shark meat in Trinidad—it is abundant, tasty, and an economically and environmentally viable food source. She said lionfish is eaten all over the Caribbean without any negative side effects, and, she had jerk lionfish in Jamaica and the only thing she got was a full belly and very satisfied taste buds.