Friends of the Park Helping Out on St. John
Friends of the Park, St. John, made a generous donation to CORE to outfit the National Park Service with Pole Spears, Shears and Educational materials for the island. In the next couple of weeks all equipment and educational material should be on island and ready to ship to St. John. We really appreciate the donation and generosity of the Friends of the Park and look forward to getting more trained and equipped divers in the water and more people educated.
More Search and Response Divers Across the Territory Trained
Happy to announce we have many more divers signing up and participating in the Caribbean Lionfish Response Program. We have 17 new Response Divers, 8 on St. Thomas and 9 on St. John as well as 15 more Search Divers, 14 on St. Thomas and 1 more on St. John.
We truly appreciate all the divers and their efforts across the Territory and welcome all the new Response and Search Divers to the Caribbean Lionfish Response Program. The two Islands have different obstacles to overcome, St. Thomas has numerous bays and smaller islands to cover and most of St. John is protected and govern by the National Park Service. 
The new Response and Search Divers on St. Thomas will be a tremendous help to John Rubattino in removing Lionfish from the many areas around the island, which he has been doing a great job coordinating and responding to the many sighting calls that he receives.
The new Response Divers on St. John will receive permits from NPS, St. John to help keep the Lionfish populations down in the many protected areas around the island and will be working with Leslie as she continues to set up dives and handle sighting calls on St. John. The National Park Service on St. John, in a joint effort with CORE, is issuing permits to CORE Response Divers to help with the invasive species in the Park’s waters. It is a team effort between the two organizations working together to preserve our natural marine environs and a huge step forward in removing the invasive Lionfish from marine protected areas. 
Karl will be holding a special Response Diver Training session for all NPS employees on St. John that would like to be trained in how to Safely Remove Lionfish from our waters. Karl is working directly with the Park Service and will be scheduling the class in the very near future.
Keeping the Wrecks Lionfish Free, STT
John has been working with Blue Island divers in an effort to keep the local wrecks on St. Thomas Lionfish free. It’s been working, these Lionfish were taken on a couple of dives and were found between 15’ and 70’. Keep up the good work !
