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This week on Waterways,
Inasive Exotics in South Florida.
Dumeril's boa, Argentine boa,
Cockatoos! These animals are just a few of the pets
handed over to the Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission at Pet Amnesty Day.
The list is long; and the potential danger to the south
Florida ecosystem from some of these invaders is grave.
One particular invasive exotic animal has captured many
media headlines: the Burmese python.
A native to Asia, the Burmese python
is one of the six largest snakes in
the world, but it's just one of an estimated three to
four hundred different invasive plant and animal
species in south Florida and that's just south
of Lake Okeechobee. Some of these organisms
are known to be invasive; while others have proven to be
invasive elsewhere, but have not yet reached critical numbers
here.But how did these snakes get here from Asia?
One theory postulates that pythons were introduced in
1992 when Hurricane Andrew tore through Homestead,
Florida, a town near the southeastern boundary of
Everglades National Park. The storm flattened a flimsy
storage facility for imported snakes and other
reptiles resulting in a release of snakes into the
surrounding ecosystem. But a more likely theory
is that Burmese pythons in the Everglades are a cumulative
effect of multiple pet owners releasing their
snakes into the wild. It became obvious really early
on that the reason we were having problems with
constrictors out here in Everglades National Park and
elsewhere in south Florida was because people were,
perhaps, making poor, uninformed decisions about
purchasing these snakes while they were small and
then in a year when that snake got out to seven or
eight feet or two years when it hits double digits they
had no alternatives. To be honest with you that
question of how these animals arrived here in the
first place is somewhat moot. We know that they were
here for one purpose and one purpose only:
to be eventually sold into the pet trade at one time or
another. These are animals that are brought in here
specifically for ownership, for pet ownership. In south
Florida, Burmese pythons are considered an invasive
exotic species. Exotic species are non-native
plants and animals introduced intentionally or
accidentally to an area through human activity. It
is crucial to draw a distinction between an
exotic species and an invasive exotic species. An
organism can be exotic and not be invasive. An exotic
organism is not necessarily harmful to an ecosystem; an
invasive exotic can be disastrous. Fortunately for
us, the vast majority of species that are introduced
into an area, exotic species, don't turn out to
be invasive. Invasive species are those that go
out of control; that move beyond cultivation and get
into areas where we don't intend them to be and begin
reproducing on the landscape. It's that small
percentage of those non-native invasive species
that we target in our management efforts here in
Everglades National Park. Invasive exotic
species are able to dominate an ecosystem because they
often have no or few predators. In their new
environment, there are no mechanisms to keep the
population in check. Invasive exotics have not
evolved to live in the delicate balance of their
new surroundings. Thus, some invasive species can
decimate the flora and fauna of an entire ecosystem. The
first line of attack to keep out invaders? Prevention.
Biologists at Everglades National Park knew that
eradicating ALL the pythons within the park boundary
would not solve the problem; they still needed to
eliminate the source. So in 2006, the Don't Let It Loose
campaign was developed. Through publications, school
posters, PSAs, billboards and presentations,
Everglades National Park made a concerted effort to
reach out to the community and remind them of the
danger posed by invasive plants and animals. As part
of the Don't Let It Loose campaign, resource managers
decided to give people a way to get rid of their exotic
pets in ways that did not hurt the environment.
Starting in 2008, the Park partnered with The Florida
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and
actually presented the first non-native pet amnesty day
here in south Florida at Miami Metro Zoo. And it was
a phenomenally successful event where we offered folks
the opportunity to come out with their animals and no
questions asked surrender their non-domestic pets with
us. A wide range of animals appear at Amnesty Day
events; turtles, birds and of course snakes. Resource
managers in Everglades National Park also knew that
they could not control python populations or other
invasive exotics if they could not reach beyond their
borders. So in 2006, the Everglades Cooperative
Invasive Species Management Area, or Everglades CISMA,
was created. This interagency working group
operates across administrative boundaries to
better manage invasive species in south
Florida. We've been dealing with some of these organisms
for literally a century or more that they've been here
in south Florida and have been actively managing them
for decades. And they're species that you're familiar
with; things like melaleuca, Brazilian pepper, Australian
pine. And the reason we focus so much attention on
these plant species is that they are capable of
consuming entire acreages. While invasive
exotic animals, like the python, get most of the
media attention, invasive exotic plants could pose an
even greater threat. Large areas of the Everglades that
were once dominated by melaleuca, a native of
Australia, are now at maintenance levels. Despite
these successes, there are many areas of south Florida
severely impacted by invasive exotic plants.
Brazilian pepper,imported in the 1800s, now covers more
than 700,000 acres in Florida and Old World
Climbing Fern which can smother entire forests. It's
unlikely these species will ever fully be
eradicated. We have five success stories where our
management actions have deliberately resulted in the
eradication of a species from the south Florida
landscape. And now I will tell you, again this depends
on your definition of eradication, it's the
black-tailed jack rabbit; the red-bellied piranha; the
giant Gambian pouch rat; the giant African snail; really
I don't think we should importing anything with the
word ëgiant' in its name; but that's just me. And,
most recently a bird called the sacred ibis. Upon
closer look at those five successful eradication
efforts, there is one common thread: resource managers
learned about those invasions early on;
and they took action immediately.
This is Tony Pernas. Tony works for Everglades National Park
and one of his jobs is to track an invasive exotic lizard
called the Tegu.
Well we basically, what we want to find out
about the tegus is their movements in the
Florida City area and whether they're moving into
natural areas and what habitats they're using. We
just want to find out as much information as we can
about the tegus so we can hopefully effectively manage
their population. Tony and his team have caught tegus
within the boundaries of Everglades National Park.
Today, they are collecting images from their field
cameras in areas surrounding the Park. So as part of an
effort to assess the population of Argentine
black and white tegus, we have a system or a network
of camera monitoring traps and this is one of them that
we check periodically to see if any tegus are present in
the area. These cameras are triggered by motion and
infrared sensors. Using chicken eggs as bait, the
researchers have had a lot of success capturing images
of tegus. Really quickly, we're just downloading the
data card and see if we had any activity on this one
particular camera. This is a good thing about these
cameras, because you don't actually have to be there.
You can set up a network of these cameras with bait so
you get a record of anything that's visiting this site,
twenty-four hours a day. So why are all of these exotic
species showing up in south Florida in the first
place? We are a biological hot spot for these
invasions. We're up there with southern California and
Hawaii for being just a hub of having these things
introduced; largely because of the large amount of
commerce in the area as well as the favorable climate
that hosts these organisms. So we've had a lot of things
introduced, but we've been lucky so far that we haven't
really had that one cataclysmic species. That
was until very recently. MUSIC Beautiful,
bold, maroon and white striped patterns across the
body; ornate spires jutting in all directions, regal and
striking with long pectoral fins and prominent dorsal
spines: the lionfish. So beautiful that people buy
them for their home aquariums; However, these
beautiful fish now threaten the coral reefs of
the Florida Keys.
Lionfish are an Indo-Pacific reef fish
and the Florida Keys are far away from their native range.
Today, however, they are established from North
Carolina throughout the Caribbean, and are now
invading the Gulf of Mexico. And if you look at
the time in which they have achieved that geographic
range, it is astounding. We first saw lionfish off the
coast of North Carolina in 2000. That marked the
beginning of the establishment of
lionfish. And the Bahamas are probably the most
heavily invaded area in the Caribbean right now. And the
density of lionfish in the Bahamas now are among the
highest we know of anywhere in the world. We're talking
in excess of four hundred lionfish per hectare. That's
a lot of lionfish. They are becoming one of the biggest
predatory fish on the reef.
A big question everyone has
is how did this invasion start? And of course there
are a number of different potential pathways; ballast
water from ships; natural migration is highly unlikely
seeing that it is a long way to the Indo-Pacific and
there have been no populations established
along the way. But aquarium releases are another
pathway. And that's the most likely pathway that these
fish were introduced from. Releases usually
happen because it gets too big for the aquarium; it
costs too much to keep feeding it; the person
holding the fish feels sorry for the fish because it's a
pet and they want to release it- sort of the ëNemo'
syndrome. Or they're moving and they don't want to kill
the fish or give it back to the pet store. Once
introduced to the Atlantic, lionfish spread rapidly.
They have a superior ability to colonize, and their life
history creates a perfect storm of propagation,
starting with the larvae. The long larval
duration period of lionfish allows them to basically be
distributed anywhere in their invaded range. So
lionfish spawned in the Caribbean for example can
end up off of North Carolina waters because of that
larval duration. And so that is one of the many
characteristics of lionfish that has facilitated or
allowed this invasion to take hold.
Another reason lionfish have been able to colonize so
effectively, is due to the lack of competition for reef space
and food. For years, top-level predators that
inhabit the Florida Keys reefs have been
over-fished - this reduction of native species has left a
vacant niche. And in the case of invasive species, we
see classically that invaders can come in and
occupy vacant niches in new environments and can cause
real problems to those environments. Such is the
case with lionfish and the real concern is that if
lionfish come in and take over that niche then how
will that impact our stock rebuilding efforts for the
snapper grouper complex? And how will that impact the
structure of the reef communutities?
Lionfish competing for a food source with economically
important species is bad; lionfish eating economically
important species is worse. Biologists have found Nassau
Grouper, yellowtail snapper, and vermillion snapper in
the stomachs of lionfish in the Atlantic. We're
concerned that as lionfish continue to prey upon these
species and prey down the numbers, beircause lionfish
are one of the most dominant reef fishes now in some
coral reef environments like in the Bahamas, that they
will then go to some of the juveniles of economically
important species. And that's a real concern
because increase predation pressure on those
economically important species could in fact hamper
stock rebuilding efforts. Lionfish also
consume ecologically important species, such as
parrotfish and wrasses; fish that graze the reef and eat
algae, which competes with coral. Lad Akins from Reef
Environmental Education Foundation sees signs in the
Bahamas that alarm him. They're becoming one
of the most abundant predatory fish on the reef.
And the impacts that those fish are having are being
seen as simply unsustainable. They're
consuming native reef fish at a rate far faster than
the native fish can recover. The first
confirmed lionfish sighting in the Florida Keys National
Marine Sanctuary was in January 2009, and resource
managers in the Keys were ready for it. NOAA had been
working on a lionfish invasion response program
for nearly a decade. The program's key
element engaging the public. Months before the first
confirmed sighting, sanctuary staff and their
partners at Reef Environmental Education
Foundation and Mote Marine Lab educated the public on
how to identify the fish and who to call to report a
sighting. When the first lionfish sighting report
came in January 2009, a response team from Reef
Environmental Education Foundation, also known as
REEF, was mobilized and caught the culprit the very
next morning. Sanctuary managers even issued the
fish a mock citation for trespassing. As reef
managers anticipated, lionfish populations spread
quickly throughout the Florida Keys reef tract. Six
months after the first sanctuary sighting, the
first lionfish was caught just south of Miami, in
Biscayne National Park, the largest marine park in the
National Park System. So far, park staff have caught
nearly 900. Invasive exotics are a problem in
Biscayne National Park. The lionfish represents the
first case of a marine invasive that we've been
concerned about. Before our main issues had been with
plants, so this is a whole new realm for us. As the
invasion progressed, so too did the response. In 2009,
sanctuary managers and REEF began training dive-shop
personnel, marine-life collectors and researchers
on how to safely collect lionfish. Since 2009, more
than 500 divers have been trained to safely handle and
collect lionfish in the Florida Keys.
Lionfish are very quick over short distances, which make
them a challenge to catch. Many people say, well what is the
best way to collect a lionfish? And certainly
spearing a lionfish is an option where spearing is
allowed. But because the fish are so quick and have
such fast reflexes, it's easy to miss with a spear;
even on a very close approach. The lionfish just
moves at the very last second and you miss. And
once the spear goes flying by, the lionfish gets the
idea- when I see a person, they are trying to get me
and I'm going to leave. And it makes subsequent
collection efforts for that fish very
difficult. Lionfish hunters have had much more success
using nets. Using two nets, the diver can gingerly
maneuver the nets around the lionfish.
That doesn't mean don't use a spear, in fact on some of the
bigger fish that may be a better option. But especially for
small fish and a higher success rate, the nets seem to work
very, very well. Those who hunt lionfish need to
exercise caution. It is highly recommended that
anyone who handles lionfish receive training on how to
do it safely. Although the spines on a lionfish are not
lethal, reactions to the stings can vary and usually
include pain and swelling. If you're stung, the best
treatment is to immerse the wound in hot, but not
scalding water. A lionfish is venomous. Just the spines
contain the venom. You don't eat the spines and therefore
you are not, you are not going to be exposed to any
of the venom. We eat the flesh, we eat the filets and
they are not poisonous in any way. If you haven't
been trained or you don't feel comfortable capturing a
lionfish, the next best thing is to mark down the
location where you saw it. The good news about
that information is that if we get a report, it's very
likely that fish is going to be in the same spot when we
go out to respond. So we can have high confidence in
being able to respond in our early detection and rapid
response efforts.
We have been looking at what's going
to keep them in check here. What keeps them in check in
their native range; what keeps them in check in their
invaded range. And what we're finding is that few
things eat lionfish. In feeding trials conducted fin
a lab, Morris tested whether or not native groupers would
feed upon lionfish. In almost every situation, the
native groupers fed upon alternative prey when given
a choice, avoiding lionfish even during extreme
starvation. Not to say that nothing eats lionfish, but
we're finding that few things eat lionfish. That
again is one of the characteristics in their
life history that has probably allowed them to
become so invasive. However, there is
one predator at the top of the food chain that could
help manage lionfish populations, us. Lionfish is
actually a very good eating fish; and REEF and NOAA's
Eat Lionfish campaign are working to create demand for
lionfish. Restaurants in the Florida Keys have already
begun serving lionfish, and REEF has published The
Lionfish Cookbook: The Caribbean's New
Delicacy. Encouraging restaurants to serve them on
the menu is important. And trying lionfish; it is a
great eating fish. It's kind of a cross between on
hogfish and a grouper; very delicate, light flavored
meat. So encouraging that and eating lionfish when it
is available. It's going to help create that market
demand. Lionfish are here to stay, but resource
managers are working hard to keep their numbers in check
using some novel control strategies. In 2010, REEF
and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
hosted three lionfish derbies in which 660
lionfish were removed from sanctuary waters by dive
teams competing for more than $10,000 in cash and
prizes. More than 1200 lionfish were removed in two
derbies in 2011 and more round-ups are being planned.
Researchers collected samples from lionfish caught
at the derbies to learn more about lionfish genetics,
growth and impacts to native marine life, and tournament
attendees sampled lionfish dishes. These events, along
with diver involvement and lionfish consumption are
important strategies in keeping lionfish under
control. If the lionfish populations are going to be
kept in check, the National Parks and the Marine
Sanctuary need your help. To report a lionfish sighting
or capture, take note of the location and submit a report
to www.reef.org. I don't want to minimize that fact
that people are going to be the controlling factor of
this. And if anyone wants to get involved and take part,
they are really going to be doing a lot to help protect
the oceans. Minimizing and managing lionfish
populations is also dependent upon eliminating
the historic source of lionfish introductions into
the wild: people. The best thing to do if you have an
unwanted fish is first contact the store at which
you purchased the fish and see if they're willing to
take it back; and many are. If that's not feasible, you
may have other aquarium owners that may be
interested in your fish. And finally if you just can't do
anything else, the most humane way to deal with the
fish is probably just freeze it. Put it in a container,
put ice in there, the temperature will cool off
very quickly and the fish will just kind of shut down
and end up passing away. You certainly don't want to
release it into the wild. The Keys is an
especially sensitive environment. One, because of
the status of coral reef environments in general; the
stressors that are happening in coral reef environments,
like coral bleaching and others, can in fact compound
the stress felt by a lionfish invasion. And how
these stressors all work together and impact the fish
community and the coral community is really unknown.
And we're sort of getting out on *** territory in
terms of assessing or forecasting or predicting
the impact of an invader like this.
Each year, at least two or three new ìinvadersî appear in south
Florida that don't belong here. Will these exotic
species become invasive? What will their impact be on
the south Florida ecosystem? When we do have
a new introduction, we count on those five to six million
people out here to be our twelve million eyes and
ears; our first line of defense in letting us know
when new introductions happen. Recently, the
Everglades Cooperative Invasive Species Management
Area, launched a new campaign called I've Got
One. Anybody in south Florida who sees a plant or
animal that they don't think is quite right it looks
different, sounds different, they think it's an invasive
species, they can report it, either by calling
1-888-I-GOT-ONE or online at www.Ivegot1.org. Making
that report sets into motion a team of responders, just
like a call to 911. A group of individuals goes out,
verifies that report and if management actions mandate
it, we can act quickly, interagency, to go and quell
that population before it expands out of control. And
that's the key acting quickly before a population
gets out of control. But the local, state and federal
land management agencies can't do it without your
help. Here's what you can do: first and foremeost be
a responsible pet owner. If you have an exotic pet you
can no longer take care of, go to myfwc.com/nonnatives
for dates and locations of upcoming non-native pet
amnesty days. Second, learn to identify what's native
and what's not. If you spot a plant or animal that
shouldn't be here, like the elusive Burmese python,
report it at www.IvegotOne.org.
To report a lionfish sighting or capture, go to www.reef.org.
In the end, the natives will thank you.