Invasive lionfish have now reached areas where the Brazil current flows south, speeding the spread of drifting larvae and putting vast new swaths of ecologically rich waters at risk.
Ricardo Araújo was getting ready for work in late 2020 when his phone lit up with a dreadful message: For the first time, someone had spotted a lionfish, an invasive predator, lurking near the waters of Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha Marine National Park, a biodiversity haven and iconic scuba diving destination off the country’s northeastern coast. The fish was killed the next morning, but nobody dared celebrate. “We knew we were in for a war,” says Araújo, the park’s research manager.
Still, they’ve been alarmed by just how quickly the invasion has progressed . As of March, lionfish have been spotted along about half of Brazil’s coastline, from the northern state of Amapá to Pernambuco, just south of the nation’s eastern tip.Now, researchers say the invasion is entering a worrying new phase. The fish have reached areas where the Brazil current flows south, speeding the spread of drifting larvae and putting vast new swaths of ecologically rich waters at risk.
That initial explosion was largely invisible to Brazilian researchers, Soares says, because the COVID-19 pandemic and budget cuts disrupted research activities. “While lionfish were out there proliferating, we were stuck in lockdown, with no money for fieldwork.” Despite the difficulties, a network of researchers tracking the invasion has validated nearly 360 lionfish sightings since 2020.
So far, researchers have documented 170 lionfish around Fernando de Noronha, mostly in shallower reefs. But many more are likely living and breeding in deeper seas, they say. ICMBio, the federal agency that manages the park, is hoping to enlist visitors and others in efforts to keep lionfish in check. Dive operators, for example, are now authorized to kill lionfish they find. “We know it’s impossible to eradicate it, but it’s possible to control it.
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