# Reef Assoc. Dive Survey



## Candy (Jan 6, 2008)

The Emerald Coast Reef Association is conducting a survey called: "Florida Saltwater Spearfishing and Lionfish Survey".
Go here: www.ecreef.org 

It's an online point and click survey that only takes about 5 minutes to complete. We are NOT collecting any personal identifying information, just information about Diving, Spearfishing and the lionfish then, ending with a few management questions.

This survey is for ALL divers who dive in Florida so, please feel free to share with your family and friends who may live in other parts of the State.

Thank you so very much for your honest answers and your time to help!!

Candy Hansard
Vice President Emerald Coast Reef Association

ECRA is a 501c3 non-profit whose mission is to improve the fishery by providing habitat. Our members are a friendly group of divers, spearfishermen and women and recreational fishermen who volunteer their time to build artificial reefs.


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## naclh2oDave (Apr 8, 2008)

Link?


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## Orion45 (Jun 26, 2008)

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/M62SQJ7


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## sealark (Sep 27, 2007)

Another useless survey:no:, Who is paying for it? wasted money. The lionfish are here, they will always be here, in time they will reach equalibrium with the oceans just like they have everywhere else. They do taste like flounder when fried up:thumbup:


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## Candy (Jan 6, 2008)

ZERO taxpayer money was spent on this survey. Although I am a spearfisher myself, it is important to understand what motivates or limits other divers. 

ECRA is working on multiple proposals for a State Wide Lionfish Population Control Program and, we need the information to help us put together a program that will actually work.

ECRA believes that it is important to know what is most likely to motivate a wide range of divers to aggressively target the lionfish. Some people will never help in the effort, others might if we understood their motivators better. 

To be successful, we need to understand a wide range of divers, at every skill level, because we'll need help from everyone. Questions that you might think are stupid are actually very important. 

ECRA is made up of private recreational divers/spear-fishermen & women and hook & line fishermen who volunteer their time to build artificial reefs. We are concerned with the exploding population of lionfish off our coast and want to be active in the search for a solution. 

We hope you will give 5 minutes of your time to help accomplish something big. We want to save our fishery so our kids and grandkids can enjoy fishing and spearfishing like we have been fortunate enough to enjoy, most of our lives.


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## sealark (Sep 27, 2007)

The motivators are money, food sourse, prizes and recognition for killing them. They haven't decimated the areas they habitated before arriving here. And you will never completely or even marginally reduce them here because they are finding them in grouper stomach's in 500 ft and deeper. Sorry if my opinion has insulted anyone. It's just the way I've seen nature funchtion in the oceans.


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## Candy (Jan 6, 2008)

That's great sealark, take the survey, we ask questions like that in the survey. Everyone has their own motivators so we are looking for information from a lot of people.


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## sealark (Sep 27, 2007)

Candy I just said about all I could about the subject. What else is there?


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## WhackUmStackUm (Jan 31, 2010)

I'll take the survey. 

I've been diving a lot of natural bottom lately. Although this may not be welcome news to members of an artificial reef organization, it seems to me that lionfish are more numerous (more fish per square foot of reef surface structure) on pyramids and other artificial reefs than on natural reefs. I'm not sure why, and it is a little surprising to me. It's just an observation.


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## WhackUmStackUm (Jan 31, 2010)

The survey needs some work. In addition to spelling mistakes (see sample below) there is an assumption that divers spearing lionfish will significantly impact the lionfish population. Given all of the lionfish I have seen in deep water here and in areas with active lionfish spearing programs such as Bonaire, I believe the jury is still out on how effective this will be. Disease and starvation are two of the primary means of natural population control.


24. How should our Government agencies, who are charged with protecting our fishery, priortize the importance of controlling the population of lionfish in our waters?








How should our Government agencies, who are charged with protecting our fishery, priortize the importance of controlling the population of lionfish in our waters? Controlling the lionfish population should be Fishery Management's #1 Priority








The lionfish threat should be addressed but given no higher priority than any other fishery issue such as fishing pressure from humans, enviornmental pollution etc.

The question that was not asked...
Do you think the lionfish population can be controlled effectively though spearfishing?


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## sealark (Sep 27, 2007)

Like I said my opinion on all those subjects. It aient gonna matter whatever you do. Kill and catch all you can and nature will overpopulate for a while. Just like the snapper are doing now. Or like the mullet did after the net ban. Now the mullet are like they were before the net ban. And please Bryan don't complain about bad spelling or English. Isn't aient a word?


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## SaltAddict (Jan 6, 2010)

I'm glad there is a local effort to eradicate some lionfish. I applaud your effort Candy. 

Whackem, I agree with sealark about the spelling lol. 

Sealark said something that (to me) seemed to make the most sense, and sealark, forgive me if the quote "isn't" (lol) exact:

Lionfish will find there place in the local ecosystem. 

A healthy attempt at eradicating them certainly can't hurt, and collecting data on divers opinions, techniques, and over all interest "isn't" (ha) a bad idea either.


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## below me (Jan 13, 2012)

done. good luck


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## WhackUmStackUm (Jan 31, 2010)

Sorry. I need to stop posting when I am in a foul mood. 

Everything is rainbows and unicorns as far and shooting lionfish are concerned. They are easy to shoot, taste good, and are not from around here. I've been stung a few times and it was not a big deal.

so...whack 'um and stack 'um


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## captainmw (Sep 5, 2011)

Sealark and whackupstackup, if you don't want to do the damn survey just don't do it. Whiny little b*tches, I swear...


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## WhackUmStackUm (Jan 31, 2010)

captainmw said:


> ...Whiny little b*tches, I swear...


Hey, I resemble that remark! 

Thanks for taking the time to offer your opinion, even though you did not like my comments and could have ignored them.


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## sealark (Sep 27, 2007)

captainmw said:


> Sealark and whackupstackup, if you don't want to do the damn survey just don't do it. Whiny little b*tches, I swear...


Whiny bitch, I just took the survey on line. Where did you come from Capt mw. Tell us something about yourself or your thaughts on the subject Sir...


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## SaltAddict (Jan 6, 2010)

Whackem whack' um, you caught that lmao! I thought I snuck it by.


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## captainmw (Sep 5, 2011)

Sorry, Whackum. Your posts were helpful. I shouldn't have directed that at you. Just Sealark. I'm frustrated at posts like his that are counter-productive to efforts being made to learn about what divers are seeing, how programs can incent more diver involvement to increase pressure on the lionfish, how to create a commercial market for the species, etc. 

I think ultimately the most effective way will be a dual effort by divers and commercial fisherman. If they can invent traps that primary target only lionfish (which may be possible) and establish market demand for the meat I can definitely see a lot of boats enter into that fishery and counter the population explosion we're seeing out there lately. But it's going to have to happen fast, not some 5 year study and 1,000 bureaucrats and agencies all getting some kickback in order to support the policy. There's no stopping the reproduction of the species and there's no natural predators, so harvesting the hell out of them is the best anyone can expect to be done about it.


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## sealark (Sep 27, 2007)

Captain please explain to me and everyone else what was counter productive about my statement. Also if you don't mind telling us your experiance with the marine environment. I would end this with the word Bitch but I wont lower myself to your level Sir...


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## captainmw (Sep 5, 2011)

PADI - OWSI
TDI - Instructor
500 GT Master Captain, including 4 years commercial fishing 
1,300+ logged dives spanning 5 continents


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## sealark (Sep 27, 2007)

Well I'll be damned you surely don't sound like it. You got me beat on one count there I only had a 100 ton license. On all the others I am not going to comment. Lets just forget about it. I will try not to be a bitch any more in my comments. You try the same...


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## Candy (Jan 6, 2008)

What we do know at this point is that doing NOTHING to control the lionfish population for the past 28 years has allowed the lionfish to invade the Atlantic Coast and now, just 3 years after they showed up in the Panhandle, the ENTIRE Gulf of Mexico is threatened.

We do know that the lionfish eats 56 species of our native fish, including red snappers, groupers, triggerfish and lobsters, and they eat our prey fish at unsustainable rates. We do know that they have removed up to 30 baby fish from the stomach of a single lionfish. Yes, you read that right, 30 baby fish out of the stomach of *one* lionfish! We know that they can eat fish that are 2/3 their own body length. We know lionfish reproduce every 4 days releasing up to 2 Million eggs per year. We know their egg sacks contain venom so our fish don't prey on them. We know that when the fry hatch they are armed with venomous spines that protect them from predation from all of our native species, except humans.

Lionfish are the greatest threat our fishery has ever seen. Yes, greater than the Deep Horizon oil spill and I believe greater than all human fishing pressure. How can I say that? Well, we have technology to clean up after oil spills, even huge ones. Human fishermen are controlled quite easily with regulations and law enforcement but...the lionfish does not respect the law and, after nearly 3 decades of research, our scientists have no solutions or technology to slow them down.

At this point, a viable and aggressive State Wide Lionfish Population Control program is our best hope to save our fishery. Non-profits can't run year round tournaments and local businesses can't afford to finance them year after year. 

ECRA is giving a honest effort to save our fishery AND to make sure that something gets done quickly that will actually have measurable results. 

We need your help and it only takes a few minutes to take the survey. Thanks to everyone who helped us with our effort to protect the fishery and, your future right to access to that fishery. I love to spearfish and hunt for lobsters as much as any of you. I know that if we don't do something quickly, we are all going look back with regret that we didn't do everything in our power, when we had the chance.

Five years from now, it will be too late. The time to act is now. The Lionfish Summit is next month. We may not get another opportunity to get this done.

To take the survey, go to www.ecreef.org Feel free to share it with all your friends who dive in Florida. Thanks!


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## Firefishvideo (Jul 1, 2010)

Thanks for your passion Candy!
I don't know what the answer is...But no one does until it presents itself. No answer ever presented itself without investigation and trial and error. At least you are making waves... And doing it without any public money....or the corruption that comes with it. I truly hope we can learn something from your effort that will help. We may fail.....but at least we tried to do something.
I took the survey....AND we killed 331 lionfish this weekend for your tournament!


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## captainmw (Sep 5, 2011)

Firefish... I'm curious. 331 is a TON of lion fish. Over how many dives and divers did it take to catch that many?


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## Firefishvideo (Jul 1, 2010)

captainmw said:


> Firefish... I'm curious. 331 is a TON of lion fish. Over how many dives and divers did it take to catch that many?


3 divers .... 4 dives each. Each dive ....average 15 minutes on the bottom.
The first reef mod we hit had 88 fish ...the second had 61 .
I dove the second reef solo....and bagged the 61 fish....my personal best....122 for the day....also a personal best.
I'm pretty sure I can beat the overall catch ....but doubt I could shoot more than 61 fish in 15 minutes.
Here is a pic of some of the fish.....We had 3 coolers full of fish....the big one is in the process of being filled with the counted fish.


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## Candy (Jan 6, 2008)

AWESOME KILL! Y'all are really amazing! 

Thanks for taking the survey FireFishVideo! It is such a simple way to help an effort that may make a big difference. You are right, it will probably take a lot of trial and error but, we need to start trying something on a statewide level! Doing nothing for the past 28 years is why we have such a big problem to deal with now.

I believe the answer is going to be to involve the masses. Not very many spear fishers have your skill level so; we need to create a statewide removal program with achievable goals, that would not discourage people from at least trying to be part of the solution.

One of the big challenges is going to be to remove the fear from the masses. Let's face it, most divers are *SCARED* of the lionfish. Over the years, I can't count how many times we have had bull sharks escort us to the surface without giving up our fish. That's a lot more dangerous than poking a docile little lionfish. Just need to stay away from those spines.


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## Hangover (Aug 5, 2013)

Ok, so to motivate divers what about the FWC allowing "extra" bag limit of other game fish on some kind of points basis for every X lionfish taken?

Say for 15 lionfish taken on board you get 1 Snapper in season and for 30 you get 1 snapper if season is closed...yada yada you make up the math.


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## Candy (Jan 6, 2008)

Hangover,

Take the survey, that type idea is one of the response answers.

The more people that participate in the survey, the better chance of getting a viable program set up.

Please, please take the survey! Ask your dive buddies to take it too.


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## Firefishvideo (Jul 1, 2010)

FYI ... my crew of 3 regular divers have been entering misc. lionfish contests in the last couple of years. We HAVE won quite a few ....but we are having to search out new sites. The sites we have hit in the past year or two do have fewer lionfish than before we started hitting them. Our 3 divers alone have killed around 1500 lionfish in the last 2 years ....around 700 in the last 2 weeks alone!
....so if a crew of 3 can make a dent in the local population....then maybe if people would decide to do something about it....we might actually help buffer the effects of this invasion.
I know we will never be able to clean the deep reefs by hand....but If I clean off a reef.....and then it is populated by snapper....then I have done a good thing.
What ever the effect.....I would LOVE to have a couple of out of season snapper tags on hand. 
If Candy gets her way....and It looks possible.......this might happen!
Take the survey.....if pretty painless ...and you might just cause something good to happen.


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## SaltAddict (Jan 6, 2010)

I did the survey a week or so ago. I got presumptuously excited when I saw "fuel voucher." I quickly realized i would have to kill a bazillion lionfish to make a dent in my fuel bill lol. 

I do however like the idea of out of season harvest tags. I will decimate some lionfish to have a grouper (I would take a snapper tag, but if we're voting, I've got a hand up for grouper) tag handy.


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