There is an ecological catastrophe going on the the Caribbean. A voracious fish with venomous spines is wreaking havoc from Venezuela to North Carolina. What can we do to stop this menace without violating the poor critter's rights?
You don't. But then, in this case, who cares?
More on the problem below....
People have been talking about Jimmy Carter a lot in the past few days. I met the man a couple of times between my youth and now, and one of his many good works is the almost elimination of the guinea worm, a parasite that caused death and pain for millions in Africa. His Carter Foundation helped sponsor an exhibit on fighting parasitic diseases. I attended the press preview and got to shake the great man's hand, and later I had a conversation with one of his aides.
Half jokingly, I asked if PeTA had ever complained about the blatant violation of the rights of the guinea worms. He smiled and said "no" but then mentioned a pro-worm rights website, which has since been taken down. He also mentioned, in all seriousness a meeting of a committee of CITES. Should there be any species that should be not only allowed to go extinct, but that CITES would support the active extermination of?
Yes, the Guinea Worm.
Let me propose another.
This is the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. When that monster storm hit the Gulf coast of the United States, an aquarium fish breeder was inundated, and a bunch of exotic species escaped and managed to get into the Gulf of Mexico.
Most were quickly eaten by groupers and sharks and the like, but one, Pterois radiata, also known as the Lionfish, had really nasty spines that hurt like the dickens, so all would be predators learned very quickly to stay away.
The Lionfish discovered that they really liked the Gulf of Mexico, and most of the fish that lived there. A happy lionfish can breed once a week, the females can lay as many as 50 thousand eggs every five days. With the babies having spines within a few weeks of hatching....you get the idea. What we've got is a plague of biblical proportions.
Over the next decade, they began to spread. Hugging the eastern coast of both Americas while eating large amounts of the native fauna, especially parrotfish, which eat the alge growing on coral reefs, protecting the polyps.
Without the parrotfish to protect them, the polyps would soon die and take the rest of the reef with them. The reefs are fragile ecosystems, and the Hixon Lab website said in its 2007 study. "...this could very well become the most disastrous marine invasion in history."
In the next eight years, that's what it's become. So what is to be done? You can't poison them, that would kill off everything else. You can't import the predators from the indo-pacific region, they might eat everything else first. Several solutions have side effects that are worse than the problem. So what to do?
Remember Cecil the Lion and that dentist who shot him last month? Well, there are lots of people who have bloodlust like that, and spearfishing is the only "safe" way to get those buggers. So you give a bunch of assholes scuba lessons, tell them NOT to go after anything else, and let them have at it!!!!!
Now you may say, "that's cruel!, It'll hurt those poor fish." That might be true, but it's better than destroying the ecology of the entire Western Atlantic, and yes they actually taste good.
So, you animal rights activists out there, why don't we make an exception: Cecil the Lionfish and all his relatives in the Western Atlantic MUST DIE!!!!!!