# Lionfish Hunter — Spearfishing an invasion > Realistic spearfishing simulation to cull invasive lionfish and restore coral reefs. (iPhone/iPad app by Blargh, LLC.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/lionfish-hunter/id6805261667 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Blargh, LLC](https://appshunter.io/developer/6805261303) - Category: Games, Casual, Simulation - Price: Free - Rating: 5.00/5 from 1 App Store ratings · 1 written reviews indexed - Age rating: 9+ - Requires: iOS 15.0 · 96 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-09-08 - Data updated: 2026-09-12 - Monetization: free - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/lionfish-hunter/id6805261667/reviews.md ## What is Lionfish Hunter? Drop off the boat with a speargun and a mesh bag. Somewhere along the reef below you there are lionfish — beautiful, venomous, and eating their way through a place they were never supposed to be. Your job is to take them out of it. Lionfish Hunter is a calm game about doing a real job well. Line up the shot, take it, bag the fish, move on. Got one. Got one. Got one. THE SHOT IS THE GAME Pull back on the right of the screen to load the speargun and let go to fire. The spear is on a tether and takes a moment to come back, so you cannot spray shots — every one is a decision. Where you hit matters as much as whether you hit: a clean kill through the body is worth restaurant money, a raking shot along the length tears the meat, and too much speargun on a small fish ruins it outright. SWIM THE REEF UNTIL YOUR AIR RUNS OUT One dive spans a whole site — work a patch of reef, swim on, work the next. Then surface wherever you happen to be and swim back along the top to your boat to unload. Run low on air and you simply go up. You can never drown, and you never lose a haul. MIND THE SPINES Those fins are venomous, they reach a long way past the body, and getting close is exactly what good shooting requires. A sting costs you air and a first-aid bill. SELL IT, THEN BUY BETTER The restaurant pays well and refuses anything small or mangled. The market takes most of it. The rendering company takes literally anything and pays accordingly. Which one you sell to is a decision you make holding the fish you actually shot. Cash buys bigger tanks, bigger bags, better spearguns and a better boat — longer dives, richer water, and reefs further out that nobody has cleared. THE REEF COMES BACK Clear the lionfish off a patch and the coral colours up and the fish return. That is the whole point of the job, and you can see it happen. WHY LIONFISH The invasion is real. Lionfish are native to the Indo-Pacific and have spread across the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf, where they have no predators and eat almost anything that fits in their mouths. Divers culling them genuinely helps reefs recover. The game carries a short ecology sheet drawn from NOAA, including the part a game would normally leave out: culling holds a reef, and nobody clears the ocean. WHO IS ACTUALLY DOING THIS The game credits and links to the organisations doing the real work — REEF, Lionfish University, the CORE Foundation, ECOMAR and NOAA Fisheries. None of them are affiliated with us and none of them endorse this. No ads. No in-app purchases. No accounts and no sign-in. The game reports crashes, and on iPhone and iPad it also records which screens you use, so that we can tell whether a change made it better. It never collects your name, your contacts, your precise location, or the advertising identifier, and there is nothing here to sign into. ## Key features - Realistic spearfishing mechanics - Invasive species culling gameplay - Resource management (air, inventory) - Equipment and boat upgrades - Reef restoration visualization - Educational ecology information ## Recent user reviews (1 of 1) All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/lionfish-hunter/id6805261667/reviews.md ### 5/5 — Hunt before the sting gets you *2026-09-08* Very cool cool game ## Frequently asked questions about Lionfish Hunter ### What is the main goal of Lionfish Hunter? The main goal of Lionfish Hunter is to simulate the real-world job of culling invasive lionfish from coral reefs. Players aim to remove these fish, which helps the reef ecosystem recover and allows native marine life to return. ### How does the spearfishing mechanic work in Lionfish Hunter? In Lionfish Hunter, players pull back on the right side of the screen to load the speargun and release to fire. The spear is tethered, requiring careful aim as shots cannot be rapid-fire. The location of the hit impacts the fish's market value. ### Can you drown or lose your catch in Lionfish Hunter? No, you cannot drown in Lionfish Hunter. If you run low on air, you will simply surface. You also never lose your haul of fish, ensuring that your efforts are always rewarded. ### What are the risks of getting too close to lionfish in Lionfish Hunter? Lionfish have venomous spines that can sting you if you get too close. A sting in Lionfish Hunter costs you air and can be considered a 'first-aid bill,' impacting your dive efficiency. ### How do you earn money and upgrade in Lionfish Hunter? You earn money by selling the lionfish you catch to restaurants or rendering companies, with prices varying based on the quality of your shot. This cash can then be used to buy better spearguns, larger tanks, bigger bags, and improved boats for longer and more productive dives. ### Does Lionfish Hunter have ads? No, Lionfish Hunter is ad-free. The game explicitly states 'No ads' in its description, offering an uninterrupted gameplay experience. ### Is Lionfish Hunter available on Android devices? Based on the provided data, Lionfish Hunter is supported on iPhone and iPad. Information regarding Android device compatibility is not specified in the current data. ### How often is Lionfish Hunter updated? Lionfish Hunter was last updated on September 10, 2026, with version 1.4. This indicates a recent update, suggesting ongoing support and potential for future improvements. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.4 — 2026-09-10 THE PYRAMIDS. The second reef out is no longer a sandbox full of buckets and spades. Somebody built all this on dry land and the sea came and took it anyway: a great pyramid with its casing stone still clinging on, a sphinx, a toppled obelisk, and a colonnade with one column left standing. Green water over pale limestone, and a bronze cat somewhere down there that is entirely unbothered about any of it. A HOW TO PLAY tab, because the controls had never been written down anywhere. What each thumb does, and the three things that catch people out. The dock also shows which build you are playing, top right, on every tab. FIXED, FOR PHONES WITH A CAMERA CUTOUT. The dock, the chart and the run out to the reef were drawn edge to edge, so on some handsets the camera sat on top of the text. All three keep clear of it now, whichever way round you hold the phone, while the water and the sky still reach the edges of the screen. FIXED. With a full bag, a speared fish is put back on the reef alive — but it used to just reappear beside you with no explanation, which looked like fish materialising out of nowhere. Now it visibly bolts and the game says how many swam off. ### 1.3 — 2026-09-09 Every reef now remembers your best haul and tells you what it is when you arrive. The catch bag weighs what you are carrying against that record all dive and turns green the moment you pass it. Weight counts how many fish, how big they were and how cleanly you shot them, all at once, so a careful dive beats a rushed one. Three things that used to leave you guessing now say what happened: Running out of air. With an empty tank you cannot swim back down, which is correct — but the game simply refused you and said nothing. It now tells you the tank is empty and offers the one thing left to do. Coming home. After emptying your bag at the boat, the run home reported nothing aboard however much you had landed. Every bag you emptied is counted now. A full bag. A fish there is no room for goes back on the reef alive. It used to reappear beside you with no explanation, which looked like fish materialising from nowhere. Now it visibly bolts and the game says how many swam off. ### 1.2 — 2026-09-09 At the boat there are now two choices instead of one. EMPTY THE BAG puts the fish on the deck and leaves you in the water; GET IN THE BOAT ends the dive. A full bag no longer sends you home — your air is the only limit now, and the bag decides how far you can range before walking back. The chart counts how many times you have cleared each reef. And the sell screen explains itself. It shows what each buyer pays per kilo and what each will accept, and under the best offer it tells you what the same fish would have been worth if you had shot them cleanly. The three buyers were never really a choice — they are a measure of how well you shot, and now they say so. ### 1.1 — 2026-09-08 The reefs are the headline. There are thirteen of them and ten have been rebuilt from scratch, because most were one shape repeated: a drowned town that was three brown roofs is now a church with a stopped clock, a water tower, a school with a flagpole and streets with stop signs on them. There is a galleon with a cannon, an open chest and an anchor. A navy wreck with a gun turret and a propeller. A snowed-in reef with a chairlift pylon and a snowman. A rocket splashdown with a scorched capsule and an engine bell. The last reef is now The Swarm — five hundred lionfish over the best coral in the game. Fish your wish. Bigger boats now earn you more, not just faster. The far reefs hold noticeably bigger lionfish, and since buyers pay by weight, the same twelve fish from the last reef are worth about two thirds more than twelve from the first. One spear can bring back up to four lionfish if you line the shot up. It used to be capped at two however well you aimed. New kit: four grades of fins, including a monofin that visibly changes how you swim, and two larger catch bags. Clear a whole reef and a conservation trust pays you $200 for it — the only money in the game that rewards finishing rather than accumulating. The sell screen now shows what each buyer will actually pay, including the bounty and minus your fines, and marks the best one. The old figure left the bounty out, so the number you compared was never the number you got. Also: the dive tells you which reef you are on, the map runs the boat to where you are actually going, and a bug that fined you for a protected species you never hit is gone. ### 1.0 — 2026-09-08 No release notes. ## More apps by Blargh, LLC - [Lumber Jack and Jill](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/lumber-jack-and-jill/id6805261300) All apps by Blargh, LLC: https://appshunter.io/developer/6805261303 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-12.*