The winners of the 2011 Roatan Marine Park photography contest are featured in beautiful high-resolution with a glossy finish alongside twelve months of calendar space. As a bonus, this year’s calendar also features a free fold-out poster!

Calendars are $12 USD each, or just $10 USD each for a pack of ten. Shipping to the United States is $5 USD per package of calendars— you can save money by buying in bulk! You can pay via paypal to our email listed below.

Contact our office at info@roatanmarinepark.net or use the form below to place your order. Payment will not be requested until order has been received and confirmed.

Enter the Roatan Marine Park’s 2011 Underwater Photo Competition for your chance to be featured in the 2012 Roatan Marine Park Calendar!

This year’s competition is accepting submissions for the following categories:

• Macro
• Divers
• Reef Inhabitants
• Invertebrates
• Conservation in Action / Reefs at Risk
• Black and White

All images must be from Roatan. Maximum of 6 entries per person but you may submit more than one entry per category. Images must be in .jpeg format. Please include your name, entry category, where image was taken, and title. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each category will be printing in the calendar.

Submission deadline is July 1st 2011. Email images to: info@roatanmarinepark.net

Can Predators Be Trained to Control an Invasive Species?

In March, on a small reef off the coast of Honduras, a group of pioneering conservationists started teaching sharks how to hunt. A half-dead lionfish, speared earlier by a diver, was released into the midst of a swirling mass of grey reef sharks. Sensing the lionfish’s final twitches, the sharks descended on the weakened prey. Unsuspectingly, a second lionfish wandered into the frenzy. Within seconds, it, too, was gone. All that remained was a trail of mush emanating from a shark’s toothy maw.

Floating in the nearby blue, photographer Antonio Busiello was there to capture the moment he and members of the Roatan Marine Park, a grassroots community organization in Honduras, had spent three months waiting for. “We weren’t sure the sharks would hunt on their own,” Busiello recalls from his studio in Los Angeles. Although not yet common behavior, the reef sharks’ voluntary hunt brings hope of a new way of battling the long-problematic proliferation of lionfish in the region. The aquarium pet turned invader, with it’s voracious appetite, prolific breeding and territorial nature, has locals and scientists up and down the Caribbean and Northern Atlantic worried about the threat it could pose to coastal ecosystems and economies by wiping out the stocks of small fish in an already stressed ecosystem.

Read more at: 
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2070599,00.html#ixzz1MMPLz8WQ

Lionfish Derby

CASH PRIZES for:

• Most lionfish caught
• Smallest lionfish caught
• Largest lionfish caught (LONGEST)

For a complete list of rules or for more info, please stop by the Marine Park Office or visit our facebook page

Derby Details

   Sign up for Roatan’s second Lionfish Derby and help control the invasive species population. $20 per team of 2 to enter, $30 per team to enter the whole weekend.

Cash prizes for most lionfish caught in a single day, biggest lionfish (longest) and smallest lionfish (weight). It is not necessary to hunt all days as the catch totals are per day.

May Sat 14th: Start from Barefoot Cay and the RMP office in West End at 7am, return by 5pm

May Sun 15th: Starting points in West End and Barefoot Cay, hours from 7am till 5pm

The Derby will be followed by a Lionfish Cook-Off on Monday May 16th at Coconut Tree Restaurant in West End, starting at 6.30pm. Come show off your culinary skills or just eat. Lionfish meat will be made available to contestants if needed. For more Cook Off information, please visit the Eat ‘em to Beat ‘em events page on the Roatan Marine Park organisation facebook.

All teams should be registered by May 12th. At least one person from each team should attend the Captains Meeting on Thursday May 12th at 5:30pm at the Marine Park office in West End. Teams will not be considered registered until waiver and entry forms have been signed and entrance paid.

For more information please stop by the Marine Park Office in Half Moon Bay or call 2445-4208.

You may dive and/or snorkel while hunting. If diving, at least one diver must have a dive computer and stick to it.

Lionfish may be taken by pole-spear, Hawaiian sling, hand net, or plastic bag. No chemicals are to be used.

Participants are required to carry a thermos bottle on the boat containing hot water for first aid purposes.

Lionfish caught must be kept on iced water in a cooler to preserve the fish and also to neutralize the venom. It is up to the hunters to cut the poisinous dorsal spines off and count the lionfish before presenting them to the judges.

All lionfish must be caught the day of the Derby. The Marine Park reserves the right to use the lionfish for  the cook off at the Awards Ceremony. In the event of a tie, the winning team will be determined by the earliest recording of its lionfish at the Scoring Station.

The Lionfish Derby is an honor system tournament; anyone found violating Derby Rules will be disqualified from receiving any prize money.

Lionfish Cook-Off

6:30PM, Monday May 16th at Coconut Tree Restaurant

Eat ‘em to beat ‘em! Show off your culinary skills or just eat fresh lionfish.

CASH PRIZES for winners!
$5 to enter, or just $10 to enjoy the meals. We will provide lionfish meat to contestants though we cannot guarantee the amount. For this reason, we recommend that anyone planning to enter the cook-off should find another source of meat, i.e. ask a dive shop or friend in the hunting competition

The Roatan Marine Park 2011 Calendar is here!

The winners of the 2010 Roatan Marine Park photography contest are featured in beautiful high-resolution with a glossy finish alongside twelve months of calendar space. As a bonus, this year’s calendar also features a free fold-out poster!

Calendars are $15 USD each, or just $12 USD each for a pack of ten. Shipping to the United States is $5 USD per package of calendars— you can save money by buying in bulk!

Contact Nic Bach at info@roatanmarinepark.net or use the form below to place your order. Payment will not be requested until order has been received and confirmed.

Anthony’s Key Resort has kindly donated a “Diving Package for One” to the Roatan Marine Park. The prize includes:

• 1 week hotel accommodation
• 3 meals a day
• 3 single tank boat dives per day
• 2 single tank boat night dives per week
• unlimited shore diving during shop hours
• air tanks, weight belts and weights
• buoyancy control workshop
• daily dolphin show presentations
• day excursion to Maya Key
• Island Fiesta Night on Anthony’s Key

The Roatan Marine Park will be holding a raffle where one lucky winner will have the opportunity to spend a week diving and relaxing at Anthony’s Key Resort. For only $50, you could be fortunate enough to see the beauty of the world’s second largest barrier reef first-hand. Help support the conservation efforts of the Roatan Marine Park as well as enter to win a week of diving FREE!

The raffle will run until 31 January 2011 with a maximum of 200 tickets to be sold; however the minimum number of tickets sold must exceed 100.

The weeks “Dive Package” is only valid from August to December of 2011, excluding holiday periods.

How to Enter the Contest

Roatan Marine Park has partnered up with SOL International Foundation to host the raffle. To enter the contest, click here or follow the link below. Contest expires 31 January 2011.

Important: In order to enter the contest, you must donate $50.00 on behalf of the “Roatan Marine Park Raffle” on the donation page. In doing so, your name will automatically be entered into the raffle.

Donate today for a chance to win!
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=11862

About Anthony’s Key Resort

For over 40 years, Anthony’s Key Resort has been Roatan’s premier diving destination resort. Guests have the opportunity to dive spectacular reefs, interact with dolphins, hike lush tropical gardens, bask in the Caribbean sunshine and much more. All this while staying in either hillside cabanas nestled in lush foliage or oceanfront bungalows perched on stilts over lapping waves.

AKR is a PADI Gold Palm 5-Star Instructor Development Center and has been a pioneer in the diving industry for more than 40 years. It is ranked as one of the world’s top dive resorts and boasts amenities including a modern fleet of three Custom Pro 48 and seven Pro 42 dive boats, an on-site recompression chamber and staff physician, and the opportunity to dive and snorkel with dolphins. Upon arrival, guests are assigned a boat, each staffed with a dive master and captain to ensure divers see a variety of dive sites throughout the week.

AKR offers an all inclusive package which comprises of 3 daily meals including coffee, milk and juices for breakfast; coffee and iced tea for lunch and dinner. Select from several entrees at lunch and dinner in their main dining room, or enjoy sumptuous buffets featuring regional specialties. Everything is freshly made and the selection is remarkable. Sodas and alcoholic beverages are also available at a reasonable charge.

Discover what avid divers, adventure travelers, nature lovers and active families already know: that AKR is the family-run Roatan resort designed by nature. These all-inclusive packages with the unique combination of adventure and tranquility keep guests coming back to Anthony’s Key Resort and Honduras’ Bay Islands again and again. Win your chance to experience this great adventure.

For more information on AKR please visit www.anthonyskey.com

Most of the world’s edible fish species are severely overfished. Lionfish is the perfect way to still enjoy fish while avoiding the guilt associated with eating species such as grouper, snapper, and other reef fish. Though lionfish are venomous, the toxin is in the spines, not the meat. If stabbed, the venom is not fatal but will cause pain and swelling near the wound. There are several methods to safely filet a lionfish. The easiest technique is to cut off the dorsal and pectoral spines using scissors. Once the spines are removed, lionfish can be safely and easily prepared like any other fish. Another way is to freeze the entire fish for 2 hours to neutralize the venomous spines.

Lionfish are tasty, with white, delicate, and flakey meat. They are a perfect substitute for grouper and are a completely sustainable and guilt-free fish to eat. There are even Lionfish cookbooks, containing recipes to use the meat in every conceivable way. Most of the recipes can also be found free online. Perhaps the most tasty and popular dish is lionfish ceviche. Other popular ways to cook lionfish include sautéing with garlic and butter or frying. Some people even use it in sushi. So do your part to protect Roatan’s reef by eating lionfish.

The Roatan Marine Park has created a television and radio public service announcement to inform people about the benefits of eating lionfish and how to safely clean them. We will also be visiting the local communities to perform demonstrations on how to cook and clean lionfish.

We have been working with the glass bottom boat in West Bay for over 4 years and since April 2010, have visited 8 schools and talked to 2,000 kids. From those, over 600 have been fortunate enough to see the wonders of Roatán’s reef first hand. When our staff or volunteers visit schools, we teach the students about the reefs, its inhabitants and their importance, as well as a host of environmental subjects. To reinforce the importance of the reef and the fact that they’re the guardians of this fragile ecosystem, we provide them with an intimate view of the coral, fish and other strange marine creatures. coral, fish, inhabitants

As they load onto the boat, the kids are excited about their adventure ahead. For some, this is the first time they’ll experience the wonders below the waves. Even though they live on an island, many can’t swim or have ever seen coral. Their first view is the vast expanse of seagrass inside the lagoon, and then as they near the channel, with faces pressed against the glass, the reef slowly materializes before their eyes. With every turtle, barracuda, eel, ray they see, their curiosity about the reef and its inhabitants grows. This could be the moment they realize how fortunate they are to live on Roatán.

 Each trip on the glass bottom boat is a new adventure and a memorable experience for the kids. We are very proud to provide this opportunity to Roatan’s youth and would like to say a huge thank you to Mario and John. If you are interested in the RMP visiting your school and taking your students on the glass bottom boat, please contact us at info@roatanmarinepark.net