feeding fish and marine life

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I attended a seminar some years ago by a marine scientist, who said that in general, marine animals are "opportunistic feeders" so, sure, when food is offered, they will take it, but if the food source is withdrawn, they will just go back back to their regular feeding pattern and theres seldom any harm done to the animal.

In my opinion the small amount of food introduced into a marine enviroment on a random basis by divers is unlikely to alter behaviour, its too small and too random, which means the marine life in the area still have to feed naturally, the problem really is that in certain cases, like daily shark feedings, the food source is abundant and never withdrawn, so its entirely possible that in the short term, in a small ecosystem, animals can become dependant on this food source, and cease feeding naturally, in which case we would have effectively changed the animals behaviour, but, nature has a funny way of sorting things out, and sooner or later, these animals will move off (for whatever reason)and continue feeding naturally.

 

[Mike Boswell]

this past weekend me and my club went for a dive in a lake in upstate CT. while there we all sat down at a submerged picnic table, broke open the freshwater mussels and fed some fish. this gave me a flash back to a cage dive in the bahamas and the operators using a bait box to attract the sharks.

alot of people and articles talk about the dangers of feeding fish and marine life to attract them (throwing off the eco system, changing natural habits etc). i didnt see anything wrong with our harmless fish feeding or the bait box on the cage dive.

where's the 'line' when feeding marine life?

Do you feed the bears at Yellowstone National Park?

When I dive, my goal is to see and enjoy the natural environment. If I were to feed the fish, I would be altering their behavior and the natural environment, and defeating the purpose of my diving.

 

[pj5]

I posted the following on a thread about a moray eel attack:

"I am ambivalent about sealife encounter businesses that allow touching in "controlled" conditions such as the local sting ray petting tank. I am dead set against folks feeding wild predatory or powerful animals in the wild (powerful including "small" animals with powerful defensive weapons like beaked mouth)...makes them associate people with food and could cause issues for other folks the animals encounter. Especially folks without food that may smell like food for some reason. Or folks who, in the animal's mind, behave like the people who feed/fed them. Folks who may not know how to safely discourage the unwanted attention."

The reason I am ambivalent about tank feeds is that it can either get the urge to touch or feed out of people's system, or it can make them think it's okay to do it in the wild.

All that being said, I did feed a few times in open water on some early snorkels and one open water dive. But I decided I did not want to train fish to be aggressive beggers around divers and swore off it. Not everyone enjoys being mobbed and nibbled by huge schools of fish. Besides, in the wild you can't control what kind of critter your feeding attracts, and you may end up in the immediate vicinity of a critter you'd rather avoid. Law of unintended consequences. If I ever get the urge to feed, I go dive in a stocked pond where it's allowed.

 

[TMHeimer]

In some areas such as Catalina where their lobster and sheephead predators still have reasonably sized populations to control them, I discourage the killing of sea urchins to feed fish. Here the urchins are not a problem ecologically because they are relatively well controlled by their natural predators. In areas where urchin barrens exist (often because the sheephead and lobster predators have been over-fished) it may be a different story.

I think it is best to know not only the local "ecology," but also the specifics of the organisms killed for food and the species that you feed them to before deciding whether it is a good or bad thing. To do it strictly for human interest seems awfully self centered IMHO. I don't see a lot of difference in killing a native species such as a sea urchin for our pleasure and finning a shark.

Yeah, I can see what you mean about the urchins, but imagine it depends on how many are killed to feed fish by how many divers. Myself, I've never had any interest in doing any of that stuff. Anyone who would purposely feed sharks and dive among them is nuts. But I know many disagree with me.

 

[adurso]

Freshwater mussels and clams help keep the water clear. If the lake is popular, enough bivalves may be killed to reduce the reproductive capacity of the population; end result is a murky lake.....

Lake Rawlings in Virginia prohibits dive knives because the clam population was decimated to feed the fish.

 

[TyGuy]

Do you feed the bears at Yellowstone National Park?

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i thinks thats an extreme comparison to small lake fish. maybe the same when feeding sharks or other larger predators.

but even after a second dive in the same location today, another diver who did not get to partake in the feeding attempted to crack open mussels and feed the sunfish and pumpkin seeds that swam by. there were no takers. that was 2 days ago when the fish were swarming us for food. now, they could really have cared less.

 

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I am dead set against folks feeding wild predatory or powerful animals in the wild (powerful including "small" animals with powerful defensive weapons like beaked mouth)...makes them associate people with food and could cause issues for other folks the animals encounter. Especially folks without food that may smell like food for some reason. Or folks who, in the animal's mind, behave like the people who feed/fed them.

Sure, I agree on the issue of not feeding powerfull predators if its done continually (like a shark feeding) as there is obviously the risk of the animal altering its behaviour in that time frame and associating divers with having a free food hand out - which could, as you point out, be an issue to innocent divers moving through the area - however this is never a long term behavioural change in the animal, and when the animal moves off, or the food source is withdrawn, it will just continue feeding normally and forget its past association.

I think we maybe tend to read too much into an animals behaviour in the short term, (like a staged feeding), and the animal is really just going about its business of feeding in a differant way, that humans are involved, I dont think interests them at all.

 

[elmer fudd]

If you think about it, we, as fishermen, have been feeding fish for a long, long time. The only problem that fishing are causing may be overfishing.

Now feeding apex predators for sake of tourism, is another story. They will associate the area and divers as an easy source of food and a negative encounter with a human could easily do more harm than good.

A couple of years ago, there was an Austrian lawyer who was on a supervised shark feed off of Bimini or Grand Bahama who was accidentally bitten in the leg by a bull or tiger and ultimately he died. Head lines reflect SCUBA diver dies after being bit by bull shark. The general public reads this and it paints a very negative stereotype of bull sharks and sharks in general.

I doubt that stories like that do much to color peoples views of sharks. I think that beyond a doubt though, they paint a negative picture of divers. The vast majority of people already perceive sharks as big, effective predators with small brains. The shark aspect of the story doesn't surprise people any more than news of a pitbull attack. People just kind of expect a certain number of them because that's the kind of animal sharks are. Now as to someone who would chum the waters and then get in alongside those sharks as they feed, in the public's mind, that's a Darwin award winner.

 

[elmer fudd]

I think we maybe tend to read too much into an animals behaviour in the short term, (like a staged feeding), and the animal is really just going about its business of feeding in a differant way, that humans are involved, I dont think interests them at all.

What I really wonder is just what kind of capacity for learning do these animals have? If fish operate almost purely on instinct can you really alter their behavior long term? I know the beta in my fish tank has come to associate me coming to his tank in the morning with food. This is a fish that has been in captivity it's whole life, yet I suspect that it would revert back to it's wild state almost instantly if I were to release it.

 

[H2O 70]

What I really wonder is just what kind of capacity for learning do these animals have? If fish operate almost purely on instinct can you really alter their behavior long term? I know the beta in my fish tank has come to associate me coming to his tank in the morning with food. This is a fish that has been in captivity it's whole life, yet I suspect that it would revert back to it's wild state almost instantly if I were to release it.

I think these animals do have a capacity to learn and remember. I'm a volunteer diver at the local aquarium. We hand feed a lot of the animals.

The divers used to feed a zebra shark named Zoe. I don't know how long ago, the divers stopped feeding Zoe by hand and the aquarists took over using a pole.

Zoe still associates divers with food. We carry the food in those cheap bait buckets. If you leave the bucket on the ground next to you, Zoe will come up and try to crush the bucket. Or Zoe will come up and swim into you and literally push you around the exhibit if you are not careful. She can be a bully.

It has a been years since the divers have hand feed her, but she still knows the divers have food.

There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence out there to support that, sharks in particular, exhibit some ability to learn and remember. I believe there is actual scientific studies to support this as well, I can't cite them to you however.