Fish Horror Tale #7: The Lion Sleeps Tonight in Your Neighborhood

The red lionfish is a venomous fish with long spines that can sting, leaving a swimmer or fisherman vomiting,  sweating or in some cases dying,

fromWikipedia: "The red lionfish is found off the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean Sea, and was likely first introduced off the Florida coast in the early to mid-1990s. It has been speculated that this introduction may have been caused when Hurricane Andrew destroyed an aquarium in southern Florida, It is also believed that six lionfish were accidentally released in Biscayne Bay, Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
However, a more recent report statesNOAA ecologist James Morris Jr. has discovered that a lionfish was discovered off the coast of south Florida prior to Hurricane Andrew in 1985. It is also believed that the lionfish were purposefully discarded by unsatisfied aquarium enthusiasts. The first documented capture of lionfish in the Atlantic occurred in Dania Beach, Florida. In 2001, NOAA documented multiple sightings of lionfish off the coast of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Bermuda, and were first detected in the Bahamas in 2004.


P. volitans comprises the largest part of the invasive lionfish population in the Atlantic and Caribbean
A vast number of lion fish are migrating to the costal waters of St. Maarten as of Aug 2011. fisherman have all of a sudden found astonishing numbers arise."