[Last Monday night's broadcast of NBC News, Brian Williams was scheduled to run a story on the introduction of these fish to the U.S. This essay was originally published to Daily Kos on October 7, 2006. I still have this specimen in my collection, although it has grown substantially.]
So, what is this Southeast Asian lionfish doing in Southern New England? Over the past couple of years I've heard rumours that these fish were being spotted off the coasts of New York and New Jersey. One was a claim that someone caught one in a bay on Long Island, and the other was from a fisherman who says he saw one off the coast of New Jersey, drifting among weeds in the Gulf Stream Current.