- Live coral covers 68% of Tela Bay, on the northern coast of Honduras, creating a complex ecosystem that’s part of the wider Mesoamerican Reef system.
- Among stressors including overfishing and coral bleaching due to climate change, is the invasive lionfish — a spectacular-looking, venomous, striped fish native to the Indo-Pacific that, with no natural predators here, is wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems throughout the Caribbean.
- To protect Tela Bay’s embattled coral reef, a local father and son are mounting a single-minded lionfish hunting effort to limit the fishes’ spread, hunting the fish themselves and organizing hunting competitions.
TELA, Honduras — “These lionfish are so confident,” says Mario Motiño Jr., co-founder and divemaster for Tela Divers, a community group in the small city of Tela on the northern coast of Honduras. He’s talking about Pterois volitans and P. miles, spectacular striped fish native to the Indo-Pacific that, with no natural predators due to their venomous spines, are brazenly wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems throughout the Caribbean. “When we get close to them with our spears they don’t even move, we can get as close as we want to hunt them.“
To protect Tela’s embattled coral reef, Motiño and his father, Mario Motiño Sr., both industrial engineers, are mounting a single-minded lionfish hunting effort to limit the fishes’ spread.
“Lionfish hunting is usually a luxury practiced on the touristy islands, but here in Tela, we had to make gear to make it accessible for everyone,” says Motiño Sr. “The lionfish are everywhere because no one has dedicated themselves to hunting them here on the coasts of the mainland.”
Live coral covers 68% of Tela Bay, creating a complex ecosystem. Overfishing has harmed parts of the reef, and bleaching, a potentially fatal result of high water temperatures due to human-caused climate change, has affected 40% of the corals in the wider Mesoamerican Reef, according to a new report based on research by the Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment (AGRRA). Add to that the invasive lionfish, which are believed to have been released from personal aquariums. With no natural predator in the Atlantic, they’ve mounted a formidable invasion since the 1990s, not just in the Caribbean but the Gulf of Mexico and up the U.S. East Coast. For now, it’s unclear how many lionfish are in Tela Bay, but they’re clearly affecting the reef. They feed on smaller native fish; without these, damaging algae grow unchecked, adding to the stresses.
“Lionfish reproduce quickly and prey on smaller fish that live in symbiosis with the corals, putting the coral ecosystem at risk, as it critically disrupts the natural exchange of nutrients,” says Julio San Martín Chicas, principal program coordinator for the north coast of Honduras with Coral Reef Alliance, a U.S.-based NGO that provides local reef conservation groups, including Tela Divers, with financial and technical assistance. “To combat this, humans need to act as their predators by spearing them, while also trying to get natural predators like sharks and groupers to eat them — a lengthy process.”
The process San Martín Chicas is referring to entails divers attempting to accustom predatory fish to hunt and eat lionfish by feeding them speared lionfish. Some advances have been made in Florida and the Honduran islands, where sharks and groupers have reportedly started hunting the invasive fish, but the method is not yet fully researched or endorsed. The Motiños have been attempting it for some time, along with hunting lionfish directly, but with limited success.
From industrial engineering to lionfish hunting
The Motiños are longtime Tela residents and own one of the largest metal fabrication businesses in Honduras, taking on projects from across Central America. In 2014, driven by curiosity, Motiño Sr. took a diving course. “I used to go fishing with my dad in the bay, but seeing what lives down there was incredible. I just didn’t know,” he recalls. Inspired, he and his son began using their resources to import essential diving equipment, such as tanks, compressors, and even a boat.
“We bought the boat in terrible shape, fixed it up in our workshop, and took it to Guatemala for a diving retrofit. It needed better steering, racks for oxygen tanks, and other modifications for safe diving,” Motiño Jr. says.
All of this was self-funded, a testament to the Motiños’ dedication to marine conservation. What started as a personal project has since grown. In 2017, the father and son, with a group of friends and colleagues, formally founded Tela Divers–Sealife Conservation, to build a local community of divers and conservationists for recreational diving.
The Motiños began hunting lionfish in 2022, as an easy and effective way to engage with conservation without having any prior experience or education in the field. They go hunting regularly on weekends, catching between five and 25 lionfish per dive.
But they quickly realized that the specialized equipment necessary to avoid contact with the fishes’ venomous spines, which can cause extreme pain and even convulsions in humans, was unavailable on the Honduran mainland, and importing it from the U.S. was prohibitively expensive. A spear that costs $40 in the U.S. would cost the Motiños about $70, and ZooKeepers, a brand of containers for safely storing lionfish, would cost at least $300.
“We’re engineers, so we started building our own equipment with what we could source locally,” Motiño Jr. says. They make containers to store the fish out of plastic tubes, and craft spears from metal rods, each with unique features designed to improve their functionality. “Every spear is different. We have to experiment a bunch, because this is all handmade and every tip we build has its ups and downsides, but in the end, everyone has a spear that they designed themselves,” Motiño Jr. says.
These solutions helped the Motiños begin organizing lionfish hunting competitions in Tela Bay to raise awareness and control the lionfish population. At the last competition, in October, 21 divers from across Honduras caught 140 lionfish. It was the first time they started to log their lionfish catches for analysis, Motiño Jr. says. They donate the lionfish to a local chef to show people that with proper preparation to remove the venomous spines, the meat is edible.
“Having local people interested in conservation is the best we can hope for as a supporting NGO,” San Martín Chicas says. “Especially locals prominent in commerce, like the Motiños, who can bring conservation issues to the Chamber of Commerce and involve the private sector.”
The Coral Reef Alliance recently supported Motiño Jr. in attending an AGRRA training course, where he was one of a few Central Americans trained in reef conservation. “I loved the training. I think I’ll focus on researching fish populations in the bay, which live in close symbiosis with the reef we’re protecting. Reducing the lionfish population has been our main challenge,” Motiño Jr. says.
From community initiative to NGO
For now, Tela Divers remains a passion project, but the Motiños say they intend to register it as an NGO eventually. In partnership with the Coral Reef Alliance, they’re training rangers and biologists in the region and participating in coral reef assessments and conservation initiatives. “Our ultimate goal is to expand and involve more of Tela’s community in marine conservation, to see and love what we have learned to love and protect,” Motiño Sr. says.
“There is still much work to be done,” San Martín Chicas says. “The reef is dying at an alarming rate and we hope these efforts expand and the people working on hunting lionfish multiply as quickly as possible.” While San Martín Chicas says it’s impossible to measure the impact this growing group of divers is having on the lionfish population, he adds he’s sure their work is a first step in the right direction.
Banner image: Mario Motiño Sr. (front) and Mario Motiño Jr. (back), checking out new lionfish spears. Image by Fritz Pinnow for Mongabay.
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