It began with one lone fish. In October 1985, a lobster fisherman hauled up a lionfish off Dania, Florida, a vivid, fan-finned creature native to the Indo-Pacific, some 10,000 miles away from home. At the time, nobody panicked. But that one fish was the opening act of what scientists now regard as one of the most alarming marine invasions ever recorded.
According to Pamela J. Schofield of the US Geological Survey, a study in Aquatic Invasions traced the chronology of the invasion and found that two Indo-Pacific lionfish species, Pterois volitans and P. miles, became established in the Western North Atlantic and Caribbean Sea. By 2009, they had spread from the Florida Keys all the way to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and had taken root throughout the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Honduras, and Costa Rica, according to NOAA.
