Lionfish Challenge

Background

The Lionfish Challenge is a summer-long lionfish tournament open to participants from anywhere within the state of Florida! The tournament is completely free to enter and is open to participants of all ages. The goal of the Challenge is to encourage and reward recreational and commercial divers to remove lionfish from Florida waters.

The Challenge is split into two divisions to cater to both commercial and recreational divers. In the recreational division, divers remove the tails from their lionfish harvests and submit those to participating checkpoints around the state for verification. Commercial harvesters submit copies of their trip tickets of commercial lionfish sales. Participants in each division compete with each other to harvest the most aggregate lionfish or most pounds of lionfish throughout the duration of the tournament.

Each year, hundreds of participants compete for the title of Lionfish King or Queen or Commercial Champion. While there are huge grand prizes for the winners, prizes are also awarded on a tiered basis to encourage harvests even for those who cannot compete to win. The Lionfish Challenge typically includes raffle prizes for diving and spearfishing equipment, mini-challenges, resourced-based awards, and MORE!