Belize National Lionfish Management Programme — Multi-Stakeholder Culling of an Invasive Reef Predator

Invasive Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans), first detected in Belizean waters around 2008–09, spread rapidly across the Belize Barrier Reef, preying on native juvenile reef fish with no natural predators to check their population.

The Belize Fisheries Department and the NGO Blue Ventures convened a 13-organisation Lionfish Working Group, producing a National Lionfish Management Strategy (2019–2023) that combines licensed spearfishing, community tournaments and derbies, and market development — encouraging lionfish as a food fish — to sustain removal pressure.

An estimated 90,000 lionfish were removed nationally in 2015 alone. Individual community derbies continue to remove large numbers in a single event: for example 964 lionfish at Caye Caulker's 2017 derby, and 371 by the winning team at San Pedro's 2023 tournament.

No comprehensive, updated national annual-removal total has been published since 2015 — more recent data exists only at the level of individual tournaments. The strategy's own ecological modelling found native reef-fish biomass still declining at roughly a quarter of surveyed sites despite sustained culling, meaning removal effort is well documented but full reef recovery is not yet demonstrated.

Read the full analysis: https://ecomarbelize.org/lionfish/caribbean_strategies