Hi my name is Nigel Coles. I used to live in Bristol, England but after a change in direction we moved overseas to work in the scuba diving industry. After a time in Thailand, for the last 8 years I have been living with my wife Deby, in the East End of Grand Cayman, The Cayman Islands. This is us, this tiny little dot just south of Cuba and west of Jamaica. Oh, and we’re surrounded by lionfish infested waters!
I’m a dive instructor, working for Tortuga Divers, part of the Red Sail group. I spend my day captaining dive boats and taking our guests on dive trips. It’s a hard life but someone has to do it 🙂
I also have my own 17ft Logic boat which my wife and I use at the weekends to go out catching lionfish. I’m the shooter, she’s the spotter and ‘dive safety supervisor’. You can see my current tally for lionfish caught up in the site header. We didn’t keep a record right from the start, so the actual total is more.
The first lionfish we found on the East End of our wonderful island was in September 2009, at Northern Lights dive site. It caused quite a stir although we all new it was going to happen one day. Our local Department of Environment was on the ball and all qualified divers were invited to go on their Lionfish Culling Course, where we all got our ‘licence to cull’.
We quickly purchased some nets and caught approximately 500 lionfish, before moving onto Pole spears. Pole spears are strictly controlled in the Cayman Islands and you need a police clearance and a special licence from the DOE. They are strictly only allowed to be used by licensed cullers and only for the catching of lionfish. Each comes from the DOE and is tagged with your license number.
I’ve set up this website to pass on my knowledge and experience of catching lionfish, so that you can stay safe, improve your skills and boost your kill ratio. Lionfish need to be killed and grilled!.
I’m not much of a cook, but with all these fish to eat, I’m trying out new recipes and ways to cook them all the time. My cooking is still better than my wife’s. Don’t tell her I said that (shhh).
Enjoy, have fun and stay safe.
