WoRMS - World Register of Marine Species. Invasive Lionfish Portal. Invasive species in the marine environment - problem regions. Saving the Ocean: Scourge of the Lionfish. Lionfish are strikingly beautiful, colorful reef fish found throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans – that’s the good news.
The bad news is that lionfish are now found all over the Caribbean Sea, and up and down the Atlantic coasts of the US and South America. Read More>> Lionfish are aliens to the Atlantic and Caribbean, and they are the perfect invasive species – aggressive, no predators, prolific breeders and tolerant of a wide range of conditions. A few escaped from an aquarium, probably in Florida, probably in the 1980s, and they are now in their millions: all over the Caribbean and up and down the Atlantic coasts of North and South America, doing immense damage to native fish species. The Pacific lionfish has become the world’s worst marine alien invasion.
Diving in the Bahamas to help researchers clear lionfish from reefs; sitting down to a lionfish dinner in the Yucatan; and joining a lionfish-only fishing derby in Florida, Carl Safina finds out how people are fighting back. ELF Lionfish Eradication Tool. Invasive Lionfish: A Guide to Control and Management. International Coral Reef Initiative - Invasive Species. Elaine Blum 2009/Marine Photobank Marine menace—an overview of the marine invasive species issue More than 70% of the earth is covered by oceans and major seas and there are more than 1.6 million kilometres of coastline.
Our marine habitats are biologically rich and extremely varied, from shallow coastal waters to deep sea trenches. People depend on the resources provided by oceans and coasts for survival and well-being in many ways. More than a billion people rely on fish as their main or only source of animal protein. Yet our marine world is under threat: over-exploitation of its resources, habitat destruction, pollution and climate change are all driving biodiversity loss. Marine habitats are populated by different species of animals, plants and microorganisms that have evolved in isolation, separated by natural barriers. For more information about the IndoPacific lionfish invasion of the U.S. south Atlantic sea coast and Caribbean Sea, click here.
SERC - Marine Invasions. Marine Invaders. A population of unassuming comb jellyfish was sucked into the ballast of a U.S. tanker and shipped halfway around the world in 1993, where it was unceremoniously dumped into the Black Sea when the tanker discharged its ballast water.
This seemingly innocuous event caused one of the most alarming species invasions in European history. At their peak in the mid-1990s, the comb jelly invaders made up 90 percent of living organisms in the Black Sea — the sheer weight of the invasive population exceeded the weight of the world’s entire fish catch. The jellyfish destroyed the Black Sea’s commercial fishing industry and cost thousands of jobs. Marine Invaders: A Worldwide Threat, Says New Conservancy Study A new study from The Nature Conservancy says this alarming occurrence was not an isolated incident. Many marine invasives harm other species and disrupt entire natural systems. 57 percent of marine invasive species in our study can be classified as harmful to the native ecosystems. Human Impacts on Marine Ecosystems. NEMIS - Northeast Marine Introduced Species.