BRASÍLIA: A lionfish with relatives in the Caribbean has been speared off the coast of Brazil, marking the furthest point south ever documented for the invasive species and raising new concerns about its range, scientists said Thursday.
Marked by elaborate orange, brown and black stripes, lionfish are native to the Indo-Pacific but were introduced to northwest Atlantic waters in the 1980s, likely when someone along Florida’s east coast released their aquarium fish into the ocean, experts say.
Since then, lionfish have spread north as far as Massachusetts in the summer months, and have penetrated deep into the Caribbean, using their venomous spines to scare off bigger predators and eating up countless numbers of young and valuable reef fish.
Described this week in the journal PLOS ONE, this 25-centimeter (nearly 10 inch) adult lionfish, Pterois volitans, off the southeastern coast of Brazil was spotted and killed by divers in May 2014.
Its genetic analysis shows that this was not another aquarium introduction but likely a relative of the invasive fish that have made their home in the Caribbean.
“Our finding at Arraial do Cabo, a subtropical reef about 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) away from the Caribbean, is surprising,” said the study led by Luiz Rocha, curator of ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences, along with experts at the Brazilian National Research Agency.
“The DNA sequences from the Brazilian lionfish matched the Caribbean individuals of Pterois volitans,” it added.
