In all fairness, there are two other ways that lionfish might have come to our coastal waters. At least six of them were liberated in Biscayne Bay, Fla., when an aquarium on public display near the beach broke during a 1992 hurricane. It is also possible, though for biological reasons unlikely, that larval forms of the fish traveled from the Pacific in the sea water that large ships carry in deep tanks for stability if they are underloaded, and then were released into the Atlantic when the tanks were discharged there.