With their endless stomach-like eating habits, lion fish directly impact populations of numerous fish and crustacean species, including commercially valuable species like snappers, groupers, and lobsters, as well as ecologically key species like parrotfish, which prevent algal overgrowth on reefs. The lion fish invasion could become the most disastrous marine invasion in history by drastically decreasing the abundance of coral reef fishes throughout the entire region.
Lionfish are known for eating anything they can fit in their mouths, and seem to eat almost constantly. During a study of invasive Lionfish in the Bahamas, one Lionfish was observed to eat twenty small fish in a span of thirty minutes. The study also found that a single Lionfish per reef could reduce the juvenile fish populations by almost 80% in just five weeks. Fast-growing and capable of reproducing year-round, Lionfish are also competing native species and spreading more quickly than anyone predicted.