Someone needs to eat these things, say scientists shocked by lionfish surge

July 12, 2013 –Vo­ra­cious li­on­fish are out-eat­ing sharks, bar­racu­das, and seem­ingly eve­ry oth­er pred­a­tor in the Car­ib­be­an Sea, re­search­ers say.

That’s fu­el­ing renewed con­cern about the spiny lit­tle in­vad­er from the East, which has dec­i­mat­ed na­tive fish in At­lantic coast­al and Car­ib­be­an wa­ters.

Sci­en­tists have a mes­sage for their fel­low hu­mans: eat these guys, please. Oth­er an­i­mals aren’t quite up to the job. 

Li­on­fish are only safe to eat af­ter care­ful re­mov­al of their ven­om­ous, sting­ing spines—which de­ter many pred­a­tors.

Lionfish are quite tasty by ma­ny ac­counts.

Last month, the first ex­pe­di­tion to use a deep-div­ing sub to study At­lantic Ocean li­on­fish found some­thing dis­turb­ing. De­spite ef­forts to con­trol their popula­t­ions, at 100 yards or me­ters deep, there were still size­a­ble popula­t­ions of li­on­fish, and the an­i­mals were big, as long as 16 inches (41 cm), sci­en­tists said.

That raises new con­cerns be­cause big fish in many spe­cies can re­pro­duce far more than lit­tle ones. They nat­u­rally eat more. Li­on­fish are al­so known to trav­el con­si­der­able dis­tances and move to var­i­ous depths.

Read the full story at World Science