Lionfish mitigation
Nose to tail.
Fin to scale.
Lionfish mitigation is our main conservation project. Our team hunts invasive lionfish in the Sapodilla Cayes Marine Reserve, Belize, and makes use of every fish.
The problem
Why lionfish?
Lionfish come from the Indo-Pacific and don't belong in the Caribbean. On this reef they have no natural predators, they breed all year, and they eat huge numbers of young reef fish.
- They eat the reef's cleaners. Young parrotfish and other grazers keep algae from smothering coral, and lionfish eat them.
- Removal works. Divers spearing lionfish by hand is one of the most effective ways to keep their numbers down on a reef.
How it works
From the reef to the table
Trained divers spear lionfish on the reef, one at a time, and bring them up in a containment tube.
Back on the island we dissect lionfish to see what they've been eating, which shows which reef fish they're taking.
The crew fillets every fish. The meat becomes meals, the fins become jewelry, and the rest goes to our partner Pezzy Pets for pet treats.
Fins are dried in the shade to keep their color, then trimmed and set by hand in Belize.
The jewelry
Wear the mission
Every piece of FINS jewelry is made from the fin of a lionfish taken off the reef. Each one is a little different, and every purchase helps pay for the next dive.
See it for yourself
Come out to the islands
On our turtle trips you'll watch the hunters come back with the day's catch, see a dissection and the filleting, taste lionfish, and see how the jewelry is made. Trips launch in 2027.
Join the waitlist