Ready to spear your lionfish yet?

It’s nearly time to grab your spears and nets and head to the water for the third annual Groundswell Lionfish Tournament this Saturday. 

Anyone wishing to obtain a lionfish culling permit will have a last chance to do so tomorrow evening at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.

Conservation charity the Ocean Support Foundation will be holding a two-hour permit session from 6pm tomorrow allowing participants to cull the invasive species on scuba.

OSF is hoping to have over 200 permit holders by Saturday’s event. The course costs $20.

Deadline

The Lionfish Tournament takes place this Saturday (rain date July 21) and the deadline for registration is this Friday at 5pm.

Registration forms are available from Groundswell’s website www.reefspect.com.

Representatives from ocean conservation charities will be joining Johnny Barnes at his roundabout on Friday morning to help to publicise the event.

The lionfish tournament starts at sunrise and participating boats must return to the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences dock by 3pm for the official weigh-in.

Corey Eddie of the OSF highlighted a number of sites that have been reported on OSF’s online report system as having lionfish on them recently.

He said: “There have been many reports of lionfish at random sites between 45 and 100 feet, with the most coming at 80-100 feet.

For those interested, it might be productive to randomly choose a site like that.”

Among the more well known sites he mentioned were; Forceful wreck; Devonshire Bay; Sea Venture wreck; North Rock; Xing Da wreck; Pelanion wreck; Tiger Reef; Cathedral; the Dredger wreck; Marie Celeste; John Smith Bay; Pollockshields; Tuckers Town; Ely’s Harbour and Castle Islands.

The general public is invited to attend the free after party at BIOS from 2:30pm until 8pm.

There will be live music from The Ukeladies and Another Plane Crash as well as lionfish tasting, handling, family fun.

Goslings will supply the bar and there will be prizes in the different categories.

Anyone wishing to take place in the Lionfish Tournament can download an application form from Groundswell’s website www.reefspect.com. Application forms should be handed in to Marine Locker with a $25 entry fee.

Anyone interested in doing the Bermuda Lionfish Culling Programme should email their name, address and phone number to [email protected]. For more information visit the Facebook page for Bermuda Lionfish Culling Program