Divers typically work in teams of two, using plastic nets, gloves and sometimes sticks to capture the fish, which has a large head with reddish-brown and white stripes and elongated, venomous spines. Without careful handling, it can cause a painful sting.

"We tell them, this is not a pleasure dive and they are hunting fish," said Simon Dixon, a lionfish hunter and scuba instructor for DiveTech,

"You have to be slow and careful and you have to treat them with respect. We have found they are quite clever. So if you move too quickly and scare the fish off, they will remember you and when you get close again they will retreat immediately," Dixon said.

Native to the Indian and Pacific oceans, red lionfish have no natural predators in the Caribbean and can produce 30,000 eggs each month. Within five weeks they can consume all the juvenile and small fish on a reef, threatening the delicate ecosystem, said Mark Hixon, a marine biologist at Oregon State University.

The species was first spotted in the Cayman Islands in early 2008 and quickly multiplied. Some 600 red lionfish were removed from Cayman waters in the last year, but the effort may not be enough to push back the invading fish, experts say.

Eat them
U.S. government researchers believe the red lionfish was introduced into Florida waters during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when an aquarium broke and at least six fish spilled into Miami's Biscayne Bay.

"At present, the only solution to the invasion is for divers to remove lionfish from the reefs," Hixon said. "We are also working in the Pacific Ocean to study lionfish in their native range to determine why they are uncommon there relative to the Atlantic and Caribbean."

Turning the red lionfish into a seafood dish, as has been done in the Bahamas, is another possible control method. Cooking destroys the toxins in the meat, which has been compared to grouper and snapper.

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