In the video above Little Cayman
Reef Divers' Sunny Moore feeds Mini Me. Video courtesy of Craig Rowland.
Little Cayman’s Reef Divers dive
instructor Dottie Benjamin must be one of groupers Mini Me’s and Benji’s
favourite people. She regularly fills their bellies with tasty lionfish.
Ms Benjamin is among the growing
number of divers in Little Cayman who are feeding dead and live lionfish caught
in handheld nets to groupers and other hungry critters, like lobsters and eels
that hang out on the island’s Bloody Bay Wall.
“Mini Me has eaten as many as five
on one dive,” she said. “He has learned to recognise them, so he follows us and
we point out on the wall where the lionfish are and he goes after them
himself.”
The friendly grouper has also
learned to recognise the nets and bags that divers certified to catch and cull
lionfish carry and immediately associates them with feeding time.
Mini Me, the larger and pushier of
the two groupers who are practically pets to divers who regularly explore
Bloody Bay Wall, gets the lion’s share of the lionfish treats. Benji has only
started eating dead ones in recent months.
“As far as I know, Mini Me is the
only one who has eaten live lionfish,” Ms. Benjamin said.
She has also fed dead lionfish to
octopi, lobsters and eels. “Lobsters love them. They come out of their hole,
grab the fish and stuff it into their mouth like an ice-cream cone,” she said.
In the last year, Mini Mi has eaten
more than 100 lionfish, Ms Benjamin estimated.
He has become adept at quickly grabbing
and eating live lionfish that divers release from their bags, and then for good
measure, sticks his head into the empty bag to makes sure there’s nothing else
to eat in there. “You have to show him that the bag is empty, otherwise he’ll
put his whole head in the bag to see if there’s any other snack there,” Ms
Benjamin said.
Divers hope that by getting the
local marine wildlife to associate lionfish with food, they will become natural
predators of the invasive species which is breeding alarmingly fast in local
waters.
“Last year, I caught 40 lionfish,
so far this year, I’ve caught 127,” she said.
“If we could only get groupers to
recognise lionfish as prey,” Ms Benjamin said. “Hopefully, the other groupers
will learn to do that.”
So far, the only defence against
the spread of lionfish on Cayman’s reefs have been divers.