Reigning Miss Cayman Lindsay Japal sits at Michael’s Genuine tucking into one of her favourites dishes – lionfish cerviche.
She is among a growing number of diners who enjoy the tasty, flaky, fleshy white meat of the fish that has become the scourge of Caribbean reefs.
Ms Japal’s efforts to help rid the reefs of this invasive predator by dining on the fish was caught on video recently in a new public service announcement, which is among a series of PSAs made by movie screenwriter James V. Hart and Stacy Frank, who are founders of the Lionfish University along with Ms Frank’s brother and noted local photographer Courtney Platt.
The newly formed group is made up of divers who are dedicated to preserving the reefs and native fish populations, which are being threatened by the lionfish invasion.
The Lionfish University has launched a website on which divers and lionfish cullers can share information and resources about the lionfish infestation.
“Our goal is that, through community efforts like LionfishU.com, we can raise the awareness of the global community to the importance of maintaining this fragile ecosystem the lionfish continue to threaten,” said the group on its site.
Visitors to the site are invited to share their lionfish stories, photos, videos, resources and suggestions.
The group has also launched a Facebook page, which is proving active with cullers and divers.
The idea behind the Lionfish University came to Mr. Hart, Ms Frank and Mr. Platt while they was researching a thriller screenplay Mr. Hart planned to write about lionfish.
“That’s what led us to set up the Lionfish University. We realised that this was not just about collecting background information. It’s a huge problem that is going to affect the social, economic and political structure in the whole region,” said Ms Frank, adding that it appeared that many people who don’t dive do not fully grasp the seriousness of the issue.
“They know it’s going on, but they don’t think it’ll affect them,” she said.
Mr. Hart agreed, saying: “They really don’t quite get the impact this could have on not just diving, but all kinds of jobs and the economy in the area. That was an eye-opener for us … We’re trying to do the PSAs to bring a very simple awareness of what is happening on the reef, that lionfish are good to eat and that, as pretty as they are, they are very dangerous.”
Mr. Hart, in an interview with the Caymanian Compass in November 2010, described his plans to base a movie, tentatively named “Hellfish”, on lionfish he encountered first in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where he learned to cull them, and during his regular dive trips to Little Cayman.
The writer, whose screenwriting credits include “Hook!”, “August Rush”, “Contact” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, however, discovered that the real-life horror of what the lionfish were doing to coral reefs and the local reef fish population was far more alarming than fiction.
He, Ms Frank and Mr. Platt set up the Lionfish University in November 2012. On a visit to Cayman earlier this year, with the help of local volunteers, they filmed a number of PSAs that they hope will raise the general public awareness of the threat lionfish pose.
They chose to film them in Cayman due the dedication and commitment of the diving community here to controlling the lionfish population, but have also been receiving input from volunteers throughout the Caribbean.
The group has worked with the Central Caribbean Marine Institute in Little Cayman.
The efforts of divers in Little Cayman have perhaps been the most focussed in culling lionfish in the Caribbean, so much so that their systematic efforts to clear one dive site at a time during regular dives in which only professional divers took part. A CCMI study of the impact on the lionfish population at certain sites showed that their approach was successful in keeping lionfish numbers down.
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