Good evening friends, I finally found a Lionfish!  These are un-welcome guests and new to Curacao with close to 50 being spotted in the past few months!  Pretty much everything about the venomous lionfish—its red-and-white zebra stripes, long, showy pectoral fins, and generally cantankerous demeanor—says, “Don’t touch!”  The venom of the lionfish, delivered via an array of up to 18 needle-like dorsal fins, is purely defensive. It relies on camouflage and lightning-fast reflexes to capture prey, mainly fish and shrimp. A sting from a lionfish is extremely painful to humans and can cause nausea and breathing difficulties, but is rarely fatal.  Lionfish are now one of the top aquarium fish in the World, in the wild they can live up to 15 years and in captivity even longer with proper care and plenty of food.  Here’s a fun Lionfish fact, a lionfish will often spread its feathery pectoral fins and herd small fish into a confined space where it can more easily swallow them.  Curacao, Bonaire and Aruba are on high alert at the moment as these fish are really starting to show up everywhere and they are not supposed to be here.  Well how did they get here then you ask??  With the strong ocean currents we have the lionfish larvae is able to be quickly spread throughout regions it was not meant for.  These fish are able to live at depths of up to 500 feet, this one here was shallow at only 60 feet, I am sure below this depth you would find even more.  They also claim that these fish can eat up to 40% of their body weight a day, which means they have the potential of wiping out many young fish species in their area.  They are trying to keep this fish under control at the moment by catching everyone that is spotted and killing them, we have 8 in the aquarium right now.  I tried to do my part today and mark the spot he was in but this one just kept moving, I will go back again soon and see if we can find him again.  Getting in and out of the water today was crazy as big waves and strong surge crashed on top of us making the dive a little more exciting!  I also saw that the big waves we have had lately broke a bunch of our beautiful Endangered Elkhorn Corals  and the pieces are all over the bottom, many which are dying, we will go out tomorrow and move them to a better spot!