Lion fish

[nipper]

Read an article on CNN.com about the invasion of the dreaded lion fish. Apparently this sucker is gulping down all of the small reef fish in the Caribbean, and has been spotted as far North as Delaware. It is supposed to be wreaking havoc on the health of the coral reefs given that it has few predators (it has stinging tentacles on it that even sharks avoid). Wonder if any of you have encountered this beast.

[randlemanboater]

I have seen newspaper reports about folks catching them off the NC coast, and there was an article about them in "Wildlife in NC" magazine not long ago.

They were saying on the radio today that they think it all originated from someones fish tank getting busted during hurricane Andrew.

[nipper]

That is right about the origin being from a private aquarium being busted in Andrew, releasing 6 of them, probably some of which had thousands of eggs in them. I made a mistake: the story is actually on MSN.com.

[tsubaki]

2 years ago the GA DNR started publishing dangers and spottings of them.
They're here, and ain't much to do about them.

[reelapeelin]

My offshore buddy got one off SC coast couple of years ago in about 90'...

[randlemanboater]

If we could get someone to think they were a viable commercial species they would be overfished in no time.

[spareparts]

I couldn't keep one alive in my tank for more than three weeks, I've got shad and mullet in there right now. If i can get some pogies and mud minnows going, I'll have a dual purpose salt water tank, viewing and bait