LIONFISH UPDATE: Here is a picture of one of the two lionfish I saw during an entire week of diving on Cayman.

Their population has plummeted. I’d like to say this is because of people hunting and eating them, but they appear to have just fallen off an ecological cliff, as invasive species sometimes do. They have become much scarcer all over the place. That’s nice, though I do miss their deliciousness.

It’ll be interesting to see how they fare over time. Now that they’re scarce, of course, it’s an especially good time to kill off the ones that are left.

Overall, the much lower level of diving due to Covid and Cayman’s absurdly restrictive policies doesn’t seem to have made a huge difference in the state of the reef. It was good before and it’s good now but there wasn’t some surge of new life. We did see a lot of fish species, turtles, and rays there, but not significantly more than last time, nearly three years ago and pre-covid.

(Yes, this post is a bit late, but I had to hit the ground running when I got home and I’m still playing catch-up.)