Lionfish Are Damaging Our Underwater Environment

The post Local Businessman Roger J. Muller, Jr. & Kelsey M. Muller, Avid Scuba Divers Their Thoughs on Lionfish first appeared on River View Observer.

In an attempt to eradicate, or at least decrease the growing lionfish population in the Atlantic Ocean – where the lionfish has no predators to keep it from over-populating– the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Association (NOAA) along with other groups and independent scuba divers have taken on the mission to hunt down the lionfish before it takes too big a bite out of the Atlanticâ€s fish habitats and ecosystems.

THE PANAMA STING
The red lionfish has white, red, brown and black stripes with dark spots on its orange fins. A favorite among aquarium owners for its colors and “plumage”, the lionfish is the peacock of fish with 18 spines that fan out like quills – only the quills shoot venom into its victims, which can deter predators and cause mild to serious stings and reactions in people.

Roger J. Muller, Jr. of Hoboken felt the sting of the lionfish first-hand. A member of the Hudson River Fishing Association, a NAUI and PADI certified Dive Master-Instructor with 84 certifications including two in lionfish hunting, Muller has traveled to Panama, Central America, Cuba, Aruba and Bonaire to spear lionfish – and during one of his dives, his hand was pierced by a spine.

“I read about lionfish and Iâ€ve seen them off the coasts of the Turks and Caicos Islands below the Bahamas,” Muller says. “I saw giant lionfish atop reefs. Theyâ€re really pretty, I thought. When I learned the problem lionfish are causing, I decided to apply my degree in Environmental Science by eliminating lionfish around the world. Little did I know Iâ€d get stung.”

Memorial Day weekend he got the itch to hunt lionfish, he says. He flew from New York to Panama, rented a boat and dove with members of Scuba Panama, the dive shop in Panama City.

“I was about to put a fish I speared into the ZooKeeper containment unit, but the current was rough and I put my hand on top of the unit to steady it and stabbed myself in the finger on one of the lionfish spines,” Muller says. “Iâ€m down 50 feet and within two minutes my hand was so swollen the thumb joint was locked.”

Muller called a member of the Divers Alert Network and they transferred him to one of their doctors. He was told to soak it in hot water.

“I was using the coffeemaker in my hotel room, soaking my hand in the boiling water,” Muller says.

A FISH IN HOT WATER
Lionfish are native to sub-tropical and tropical regions from southern Japan and southern Korea to the east coasts of Australia, Indonesia, Micronesia, and French Polynesia, and in the South Pacific. As they multiply, they move to new locations to feed and now lionfish are found along the East Coast in Florida, North Carolina, Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Aruba, Bonaire and Mexico. Every four days a female lionfish can release 10,000-30,000 eggs; thatâ€s 2 million eggs a year.

James A. Morris, Jr., Ph.D. is an ecologist and lionfish expert for NOAA. He says the biggest areas of concern for lionfish invasions are the Caribbean Islands because they are very dependent on the coral reefs, which are a big part of their economy. But itâ€s hard to say which locations have the worst impact because the invasion is still spreading.

“Overfishing has occurred and been occurring for the last century,” Morris says, “and now a predator is taking up the space and diet of the reef that was once occupied by the native species. How will this predator in our native reefs impact on its ability to recover snapper and grouper that have been over-harvested. We may not be able to return or restore native species because lionfish are there.”

If the Lionfish problem canâ€t be fixed, the invasion is likely to get worse in the next 5-10 years, Morris says. The over-population will eventually peak; itâ€s just difficult to say when.

“At some point the population becomes limited either with space or with some competing relationships; itâ€s just really hard to predict,” Morris says.

PUT ANOTHER LIONFISH ON THE BAR-B
Spearing the lionfish is how hunters catch the lionfish during their expeditions. Some lionfish associations host spearfishing derbies and award prizes for the most lionfish caught. Another way to get people involved in eradicating the lionfish, according to NOAA, is to promote how tasty the lionfish is when served with lemon, or breaded, fried and doused in hot sauce. Creating a food market demand for the lionfish and promoting it as a tasty delicacy can add impetus to fishermen to go after the spiny fish, decrease its numbers and make money.

“Lionfish, is a really good fish to eat and many years ago we released information suggesting lionfish could be used as a food fish,” Morris says. “Itâ€s not a new concept; it was going to happen anyway. One of the realities is that you need to control lionfish. We canâ€t control this invasion locally with armies of volunteers, thatâ€s way too expansive, but harvesting them is much better as a long term strategy. It has really taken off. Harvesting lionfish has become a big part of local fisheries.”

Ali ElHage who designed The Zookeeper, the lionfish containment unit used for collecting the fish, is a member of Team Zookeeper, a lionfish elimination team that in one year, eliminated 12,000 lionfish in Curacao. Allie ElHage cooks the lionfish he spears.

“I make pan-seared lionfish, or ceviche,” ElHage says. “Yesterday, I filleted them for dinner. Theyâ€re a white meaty fish, very high in Omega 3 and low in mercury. Itâ€s somewhat of a healthy fish to eat.”

Norman Arends, a scuba instructor in Aruba takes divers on Lionfish Safaris and the lionfish he catches, he sells at market. Muller, who caught 22 lionfish on one of Arends†safaris says the lionfish is very tasty.

“Itâ€s really meaty and with no fishy taste,” Muller says. “When Norman first starting selling the lionfish, people were reluctant to buy it. So he started giving away free samples and a year and a half later, heâ€s selling out at the farmers market. He uses the spines as toothpicks.”

LIONFISH HUNTERS WANTED
There are many diving associations recruiting members interested in joining the cause to eradicate lionfish. If youâ€re interested, check out these resources:

Aruba Under Water Hunters, www.facebook.com/ArubaUnderWaterHuntersAuwha
CORE – Caribbean Lionfish Response Program, www.corevi.org
CULL – Cayman United Lionfish League, www.facebook.com/CullCaymanUnitedLionfishLeague
Florida Keys National Marine Life Sanctuary, www.floridakeys.noaa.gov
Fundacion Clear This Fish (Panama), www.clearthisfish.org
Gulf Coast Lionfish Coalition, www.gulfcoastlionfish.com
Lionfish Elimination Team (USA and Curacao), www.lionfisheliminationteam.com
Lionfish University, www.lionfishu.com
LionfishHunting.com
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, www.noaa.gov
Poisson Lion (French Caribbean), www.facebook.com/Mangezdupoissonlion
Proyecto Pterois (Puerto Rico), www.proyectopterois.com
Reef.org
Roatan Lionfish Hunters, www.facebook.com/roatanlionfish
The Environmental Education Foundations, neefusa.org/programs/index.htm
The ZooKeeper – Lionfish Containment Unit, www.zkstore.com

***
To contact Roger J. Muller, Jr., call 201-659-2403.
Muller Insurance, 930 Washington Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030
www.mullerinsurance.com; help@mullerinsurance.com

The post THE LIONFISH HUNTERS- Hoboken Scuba Diver joins Mission to Eradicate Deadly Ocean Predator first appeared on River View Observer.

 

Spending time with your father can lead to a lot of things such as man talk, getting together for a sports event or maybe just creating special times, but for the son of Bruce Dillin, owner of Dillin Tires of Bayonne, it can only mean one thing: itâ€s time for adventure.  In a scene that looked like an episode from Jeremy Wadeâ€s cable TV show “River Monsters” Dillin and his son Christian captured their own real-life “river monsters”. On an excursion twenty miles southeast of Palestine, Texas, on a stretch of the Trinity River; father and son set out on an adventure that would bring about amazing results.

 Skilled in the art of bowfishing the Dillin duo combed the river in search of gar fish known as “river monsters”, these rare species of fish are known to inhabit the Trinity River, a 710 mile–long  river that flows within the state of Texas toward the Gulf of Mexico. Many fishermen come from all across the U.S. to see what this amazing river has to offer.

 Bowfishing requires a lot of skill and extreme concentration, but for the Dillinâ€s the thrill of the hunt wins overall. Bruce Dillinâ€s catch was an amazing “needlenose gar” equipped with a long snout and a narrow beak which contains many large teeth, its long body shaped like a cylinder and covered with diamond shaped scales. Dillinâ€s son Christian captured a “pointy tooth, alligator gar,” a fish with a long snout, many teeth and a bony head like an alligator.

 “Iâ€ve been taking my son fishing since heâ€s five years old and he has been with me on many extreme adventures,” Bruce Dillin says. It was great when we brought the line up and saw what we had caught.”

 Bruce and Christian team up for lots of extreme adventures which consist of mountain biking, snowshoeing and bowfishing. Like his dad, Christian is always up for an adventure, especially scouting for these rare river monsters.

 “Bowfishing is really exciting,” Christian says. “I felt really great when I pulled up the line and saw what I had caught. It feels really good having adventures with my dad; Itâ€s good to try different things.”

 For Bruce, itâ€s the thrill of the hunt; when it comes to bowfishing, so when asked what advice he had for amateur bowfishers, he replied, “Itâ€s important to have good equipment and to make sure you follow the rules. Iâ€m all for having as much fun as you can without hurting anybody. I encourage people to go out there and find what it is that makes them happy.”

 As Christian Dillin looks back at all he and his father have accomplished, he hopes that he will continue to share these extreme adventures with his dad and to create some new ones of his own, he explains “I like these adventures, and I hope to continue to do the same kind of things that my dad and I do, and hopefully do the same when I get older.”

 

  

The post Father and Son Capture Real-Life River Monsters-Christian and Bruce Dillin first appeared on River View Observer.

   PADI and NAUI Professioal Divemaster and Assistant Instructor Roger J. Muller, Jr. takes his Daughters on a Trip to Remember

 

By Sally Deering

 

 Some families vacation in the mountains, some visit Floridaâ€s Disneyworld, but Roger J. Muller, Jr. of Hoboken, New Jersey, Professional Divemaster and Assistant Instructor who holds 80 PADI, NAUI, TDI, SDI and SSI certifications decided to give his daughters Kelsey, 19, and Taylor, 15, a trip to remember.  Muller took his daughters, who are also certified divers, aboard the Nautilus Explorer to Ensenada, Mexicoâ€s Guadalupe Island where they plunged 40 feet below the waterâ€s surface to observe the behavior of the mysterious Great White Sharks.

Muller chose the Nautilus Explorer, which takes small groups of scuba divers on unique diving expeditions to give his daughters a memorable vacation away from the daily demands of their busy lifestyles. Muller, a Certified Professional Insurance Agent oversees Muller Insurance, the family business, in Hoboken, and in his spare time serves as General Manager and Captain of the Hoboken Rockets Ice Hockey team; Kelsey is a sophomore studying economics at Harvard College in Cambridge and Taylor is a high school sophomore.

“Itâ€s a wonderful bonding experience,” Muller says. “They get the opportunity to see Great White Sharks in their natural habitat and learn about shark advocacy. Itâ€s also five days on a boat with no Internet access or cell phones to text boyfriends.”

Based in British Columbia, Canada, the Nautilus Explorer takes divers to the giant mantas and dolphins of Socorro Island and adventures into Alaska, British Columbia, the Sea of Cortez, the California Channel Islands, Baja California, San Benitos Island and Clipperton Atoll. Guadalupe Island is the top destination for Great White Shark encounters, says Jason Crabb, Director of Marketing for the Nautilus Explorer, and the best way to observe Great White Sharks is by descending into their world and interacting with them on their terms in a natural way. With four submersible aluminum cages that descend to 20-foot and 40-foot depths, the Nautilus Explorer takes divers down to where the sharks naturally travel and without chum to attract them the encounters between humans and sharks are an equal exchange of curiosity and respect.

Thatâ€s exactly the experience Kelsey and Taylor shared with their dad, who taught them how to dive in 2001, while training for his PADI Assistant Instructor certification. Muller trained his daughters to become certified divers in the familyâ€s backyard pool.

“They became my students,” Muller says. “Kelsey started at 6 and two days after she turned 10, she was the youngest to ever become a PADI Open Water Certified Diver.  At 12, she became the youngest Junior Master Scuba Diver, thatâ€s the highest non-professional rating that you can get. Taylor started at 5 and she now has 21 certifications including Master Scuba Diver.”

Muller says his daughters†training and his experience as a diver made it easy for him to take them on the Great White Shark diving expedition.

“My kids trust me when theyâ€re with me, they know Iâ€m looking after them,” Muller says. “We have spent years practicing. Scuba Diving is a dangerous sport. You need to respect the water and respect the things living in the water.”

At 19, Kelsey holds 38 diving certification, earning her Open Water Certification when she was 10 and her Junior Master Scuba Diver certification at 12. Witnessing the awe-inspiring presence of one of the worldâ€s greatest predators was a diving experience like no other. Kelsey says: “I felt rather small among them, as if we were the entertainment for them and not the other way around. While observing them from our cages, limited to the tiny expanse of water we could see around us, they had the vast oceans around them to explore and master.  I realized that no matter how long we observed them, we would probably never procure all the Great Whiteâ€s secrets; for they could simply disappear into the distance, nothing betraying their position but the reflection of the silver sun on the Pilot Fish that hung close to their sides.”

During their trip, Kelsey and her dad were together in one of the submersible cages with Kelsey shooting video and Muller, who is also a PADI Digital Photography Instructor, taking photographs. At one point Muller stuck his head out between the bars of the cage just as a Great White Shark passed by – his head just inches from the sharkâ€s mouth, which startled but didnâ€t surprise Kelsey one bit.

“My most exciting moment was when my dad stuck his head outside the cage and the shark came in touching distance and he didnâ€t know it was there,” Kelsey recalls. “Iâ€m pointing to dad to turn around and he turned around and made a face like ‘uh-ohâ€.”

Of course, it all turned out alright; the Great White Shark kept on passing through and both Muller and Kelsey have photos and video footage of the experience.

“The power of these creatures has frightened even the strongest of men, yet here we are looking them square in the eyes, like equals,” Kelsey says. “I learned that the Great Whites are ferocious, yet magnificent creatures, which inspires me to learn more about the world and the sea, if not myself.”

From the moment she entered the submersible cages that plunged 40 feet below the waterâ€s surface Taylor says she was filled with excitement. She has gone on many diving adventures with her dad and sister, but this experience was over the top.

“It really is a trip to talk about,” Taylor says. ““I never thought I would be able to go five days without a phone or the Internet but as each day goes by you forget more and more about the outside world, These memories will be with me forever and I plan to tell my children about my remarkable trip that brought me to Guadalupe Island to dive with Great White Sharks and the even better experience I had during my stay on the Nautilus Explorer.”

Nautilus Explorer makes 18 trips per season, from the end of July to the middle of November, which is the season of the sharks†migration to Guadalupe Islandâ€s warmer waters to feed on the massive Sea Lion colony that lives there. They also go there to mate. Very little is known about the mating rituals of the Great White Shark. Thereâ€s still a large mystery looming over these species and the Nautilus Explorer regularly takes groups of scientists to Guadalupe Island to unravel those mysteries. The Nautilus Explorerâ€s aim is to raise awareness of the beauty and peacefulness of Great White Sharks and to remove the fear factor typically associated with the mention of their name.

“Itâ€s a fantastic bonding experience for families,” Crabb says. “You have to teach children at an early age to be advocates for conservation and push their parents to help as much as they can for the plight of the sharks. Now is the time we need action. The shark population is dwindling and we need more advocates.Last year we counted over 109 unique sharks off Guadalupe Island and we see the same sharks returning. We just took pictures of a new shark, a big shark, very old. Thatâ€s exciting when a newcomer is on the block.”

Captain Mike Lever of the Nautilus Explorer and his wife Mary Anne established the Guadalupe Conservation Fund and work closely with the Mexican Navy and the Mexican Environmental Agency CONANP to help ongoing research on Great White Sharks as well as to observe and report illegal shark fishing off Guadalupe Island. The owners of the Nautilus Explorer went as far as buying a twin engine aircraft which they donate the use of to the Mexican Park service.

Shark conservationist and activist Alisa Schwartz recently returned from her third trip to Guadalupe Island. She was 11 when she began diving with her dad, a former Navy Seal, and since then she has gone on to work with Shark Angels, a non-profit advocacy group based in New York and 333 Productions, a documentary film company in Exeter, Rhode Island, which recently won an award from the Cousteau family for a 90-second film they made for Jacques Cousteauâ€s 100^th birthday.

Sharks are critical to healthy marine eco-systems,” Schwartz says. “Iâ€ve been diving since Iâ€m 11 and Iâ€m 51 now and I can see first-hand what weâ€re doing to our oceans – pollution, over-fishing, climate change and the killing of sharks for their fins for shark fin soup. Sharks protect the coral reefs, they eat the weak and the sick and it keeps the reefs healthy. We have other problems with the oceans, sharks are not the be all, but if you take the shark, an apex predator, out of that equation, we donâ€t know what the effects will be and we donâ€t want to know. This will be a scary thing.”

Educating children about the importance of sharks and the survival of our oceans is critical, Schwartz says.

“I work with Project Aware doing beach clean ups and library programs for kids. Iâ€m always emphasizing the importance of the ocean, its majesty and my main focus is to try to dispel the scariness about sharks,” Schwartz says. “Children are the future. They need to learn early on to take charge of their world and when they learn of the sharks’ plight, they’re all over it. I have been diving with them since I was 11 and I’m still here to tell the tales.”

Mullerâ€s vacation with Kelsey and Taylor is the perfect example of parents educating their children about shark conservancy that inspires them to become advocates. Schwartz says: “Instead of taking his daughters to Disneyworld or a mountain retreat, he took them to see endangered species in their natural habitat no holds barred.”

Kelsey and Taylor say they had a thrilling time diving with the Great White Sharks and for both girls, it is an event they will remember the rest of their lives – although itâ€s very likely the girls and their dad will be taking more exciting diving trips in the future.

“My dad is a real adventurer,” Kelsey says, “and thatâ€s rubbed off on me. Heâ€s inspired me to want to go out there and see the world and not be afraid to do things other people wonâ€t do.”

Sally Deering is an arts and culture writer. She resides in Weehawken, New Jersey.

She can be reached at:

201-667-3636

SallyDeer@aol.com

www.SallyDeering.com

 

Roger J. Muller, Jr. can be reached in Hoboken, New Jersey at:

 201-803-9091

Roger@MullerInsurance.com

www.mullerinsurance.com

 

 

Three photos attached

 

 

 

 

The post Dad and Daughters take Family Vacation Diving with Great White Sharks first appeared on River View Observer.