"Eat Lions, Not Parrots!"
It's not often that I encourage the eating of reef fish, but this is an exception, as this fish is doing the reef no good, in the Caribbean. It belongs in the Pacific, so as an invasive predator, it has no natural predators, itself, and so multiplies easily. It is voracious in its appetite, gobbling up all the other smaller fish on the reef and decimating the (already stressed) populations of indigenous species.

The amazingly beautiful spines are almost bewitching to look at and are equipped with venom, so capturing them requires some special handling on the part of fishermen. Once the venomous spines are removed, they make for very good eating!

Always choose Lionfish over Parrotfish on a menu, and give the reef a helping hand. (They taste great, too.)

This painting was created on heavy-duty, d'Arches watercolour paper (my favourite).

I painted the lionfish in a combination of resists and watercolour painting techniques, to give a shimmering impression of being underwater.