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From PADI instructor Annie Olszewski of Bonaire Dive and Adventure: June 2011
To Reef Protection Inc.
I just wanted to send you a llittle note to let you know how we at Bonaire Dive and Adventure are using your ELF tool.
Since the implementaton of the shoot on site program on Bonaire several of our dive staff have been out patrolling for and eliminating lionfish. We have always had a very involved customer base who were marking and sighting lionfish for us and then reprting their finds on our record sheets.
I developed a Lionfish Awareness and Elimination course december 2010 and the students were loving being a part of the action. Now that STINAPA has allowed for the use of ELFs for students we have more divers than ever signing up for our course and removing lionfish from the reefs on Bonaire!
Keep your eye out for mentions of our course and our use of the ELF spear in the June 2011 dutch dive magazine, Duiken. Also, in the August 2011 issue of Sport Diver and the next qarter edition of the Underssea Journal.
Recently,I was contacted by dive shops in the Bahamas, Curacao and the States for the use of my course, and I am always praising the use of the ELF spear!
Thank you so much for all your help with this huge problem!
Annie Olszewski
PADI IDC Staff Instructor #492782
From Bas Noij: A PADI instructor on Bonaire VIP Diving Group: April 2011
I have been using the ELF for several months now and I am very happy with it's use. I am a dive professional working on Bonaire in the Dutch Caribbean. The foundation managing the National Marine Park (STINAPA) has issued local divers and dive professionals with ELFs in an effort to reduce the numbers of lionfish on our reefs. We were given en training workshop by Tal Bixby, the inventor of the ELF after which we were on our way and it didn't take long to get used to the ELF. The size is just right to be able to clip it on to my BCD without it interfering with my regular diving activities. When I need to use it it is ready to go. It is heavy duty built so it can take a beating. With the amount of (ab)use we put it through small things can still break but they are easy to fix (and Tal was kind enough to teach us all the tricks of how to do this). Hunting lionfish with the ELF added a whole new dimension to diving for me. I am looking forward to many years of active use!"
My name is Andrei Steck.
I am a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor, #233679.
I Live in Cozumel Island, Mexico, a place that I love with passion because of the greatness of its reefs. I dive here for a living with a minimum of 2 dives per day, taking divers to the hottest spots of Palancar Reef and to the wall. Because I find it so beautiful and because it amazes anyone - experienced diver or beginners - I am particularly affected by the situation that is happening here and in the rest of the Caribbean islands.
The threat comes from the lionfish, a voracious predator introduced accidentally a few years ago. I believe that it has been around 5 years since it got here, as it happened in the coasts of Florida and Bahamas.
Well, this fish made its way down to Cozumel now. What I have seen since the very first day that we started spotting them in our reefs until today has impressed me to the point that if I don’t take action on trying to control the spread of this alien species, we will completely lose our aquarium sooner than most can imagine. Only us that are in the water every day can see the impact of this plague.
A year ago we started to catch them with net bags for dive gear and mask cases. We started having success with this because the fish were an inch long and there were only a few. My partners and I make a group of around 23 dive pros in the dive shop I work at, and we are all taking action now.
The first 2 months I would get one every 2 weeks and so were my partners. The next 2 months I would struggle a lot more to catch them with nets and mask cases because there were a lot more fish, and they were bigger and also most important: they started hiding from us, getting deeper in the reefs, reaching places into the coral were we couldn’t reach easy without touching the coral, or close spaces were our tools wouldn’t fit in.
Once we decided to create our own Hawaiian slings, all of us had better success with this kind of tool but they needed more precision and also we needed to avoid touching the reef, which was hard with Hawaiians. But still, I continued using mine for the next months, by now I was catching at least 1 every third day, and the range of success with this was about 30% effective.
Two months ago I was given the ELF tool to try it and it made a huge difference among all the designs we could invent here in the island. It was very effective, getting at least 80% of the lion fish that I shot. I started killing most, bringing them out easier and without damaging the marine life.
The ELF tool is the only thing I’m using these days. I bring it on every dive because it is easy to carry, it’s light and it doesn’t represent any risk to my students or the reef.
I am convinced that this is the right tool to use to fight this menace, and the proof is that in the last couple weeks I have not found any lion fish in the reefs where we dive the most. This tells me that the spread of the fish can be controlled and that our reefs can be protected as far as we keep up with the fight with great effort and proper lionfish eliminating tools like the ELF.
Now these days we have started to cook them in different recipes like:
1. Grilled with garlic, butter and spices.
2. Prepared with vinegar, ginger, lime; steam.
3. Battered with wheat and corn meal, with lemon or different dressings. Etc.
The lionfish is delicious to eat, and the idea of helping the reef at the same time that we provide healthy food to our people makes me feel I’m doing the right thing.
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