Red Lion fish in East London estuaries?

[Scythe]

I've seen many Lionfish of different subspecies in the river at Kosi mouth. Very pretty, aggro little guys.

[Korrie]

Some species that have all ready found their way to the Cape via the oilrigs ( or that is what they think) is a specie of prawn and a type of black or brown mussel.
The mussel is particulary invasive and have had a a detrimental effect on our local species of mussels.

[Andre]

Some species that have all ready found their way to the Cape via the oilrigs ( or that is what they think) is a specie of prawn and a type of black or brown mussel.
The mussel is particulary invasive and have had a a detrimental effect on our local species of mussels.

Interesting you bring up the mussels...sorry for another mini hijack, but just to expand the mussel situation as follows:-

The black mussel, the one you see everywhere, is alien, and was first introduced by wooden hulled ships of previous centuries. It took root on the SA coast, and has all but eradicated our two endemic species, being the brown mussel and ribbed mussel, which are now both under extreme threat of total extinction. The one upside of the black mussel invasion, is the fact that it has contributed positively to the increase in population of the African Black Oyster catcher. These birds are now off the critical list, largely due to the conservation efforts in various areas, in actually protecting some populations of black mussel for this purpose. The black mussel is also known as the European mussel, or Mediteranean mussel.

[Kevin James]

Just to add another branch to this thread....

Just be careful what you take home with you off the beach.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/...in-girls-bath/

[chris williams]

Those blue-ringed octopus were horrible things.

PS my avatar is a friendly octopus who lives in a coconut shell!

[Kevin James]

[QUOTE=chris williams;158252]Those blue-ringed octopus were horrible things.

PS my avatar is a friendly octopus who lives in a coconut shell![/QUOTE]

Absolutely Chris -

There was some Chinaman zapped recently fishing 25 meters above the water from a container ship by an Irukandji jellyfish. The stingers got on his handline and zingo.....full on tax funded mercy flight.

IMHO still reckon the blue veined trouser snake is the one to watch for - deadly bloody things if not treated properly. Fortunately I have a tame one that has taken a liking to most things feminine. Tame now after some years - Was thinking of using this as an avatar, but thought better of it. Gets quite shy of the camera.

All good mate -

[gtraas]

I just ran across this post, and decided to do a little digging. From my time at Rhodes we found quite a few lionfish in the Kariega River, at Kenton-On-Sea. These turned out to be Pterois miles, the devil firefish, which is native to our shores. From what I understand, they don't really survive too well offshore due to the cold this far south. They tend to move into the estuaries where the temperature is a little more comfortable for them. I'm not quite sure whether they survive over the winter period, but when we sampled some of the Transkei rivers, we found some quite large specimens that had definitely survived the winters there.

It's quite possible that the lionfish you found in the Nahoon were devil firefish, but as has been mentioned in this thread, Pterois volitans, or the red lionfish, is invading at a rapid rate on the US east coast. As far as I know, they haven't started on our coast just yet, but I could be looking at outdated info here. According to fishbase.org, there was an unconfirmed report of a red lionfish from Mozambique, so it is possible that it has already moved down.

Some links ....
Red lionfish : confirmed country list
Red lionfish country list

Devil firefish : confirmed country list
Devil firefish country list

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.