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The Documentary: The Fish that Ate Florida

Lionfish

30/09/2017 GMT

The Fish that Ate Florida

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Fish that Ate Florida

Why some people want to eradicate the lionfish from Florida's waters

The lionfish invaded Florida’s waters, and for Florida’s humans, that’s a big problem. Kent DePinto investigates.

As part of the BBC Life Stories season, exploring our relationship with the natural world, we travel under the sea in pursuit of a major ecological threat to Western Atlantic coasts - the Lionfish.
 
The species, which recently spread from its natural territory in the Pacific to Atlantic waters, is aggressive, exotic and very, very hungry. Kent DePinto explores how lionfish went from being an aquarium favourite to the scourge of an aquatic ecosystem as it eats everything in its path – with no natural predators in these seas to control it. She meets the people who have made it their life’s work to eradicate lionfish from Florida waters, in an underwater journey of spears, guns, and survival of the fittest.
 
Kent explores the tight-knit and sometimes unlikely partnerships of conservationists, scientists, and competitive spear-fishermen and women, as they band together to combat one of the biggest challenges American and Caribbean coral reefs have faced.

(Photo: Lionfish in an aquarium)

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