Fantasy Island Resort - Roatan Diving

[rayaa3]

While I saw no one feeding lion fish to eels while I was there last week....We did have a very curious eel stalk us on one dive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f8qlZAi5UA

 

[Mike]

Certainly looked like other eels I've seen who now approach divers for a hand out having been fed lionfish by others in the foolish hopes of 'training' them.

 

[skynscuba]

While I saw no one feeding lion fish to eels while I was there last week....We did have a very curious eel stalk us on one dive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f8qlZAi5UA

I stay well away from morays that are out free swimming in the daytime. One of my most "interesting" underwater sights was a moray nosing around, just off Fantasy Island towards the Prince Albert. Suddenly he flushed out a lobster, which shot up and away at high speed. The moray pursued, missed, and bit a woman in the face, right across the cheek and mask. She didn't know she was bleeding (yes, green at depth), and thought that someone had accidentally kicked her. Nasty.

 

[Doc]

That's icky. No pix?


The best area for Eels (Green Morays) near FIBR is between the Gazebo and the Prince Albert Wreck. The other primo area is the tiny lagoon just to the West of the Gazebo- almost never used by divers, but rife with Eels, especially at night.

Here's an image... The Gazebo is at the point, center left. The wreck is at 4:00 from there, the referenced lagoon is at 10:00



I stand by what I said in Post #6: FIBR DMs regularly feed fish and Eels regularly.
Animal behaviors are learned, the local Eels now associate divers with food.

 

[Thook]

Here is another example... My wife and I came over a reef and we ran into a large group off of a live aboard and their DM was putting on a show...Although I found it interesting to see a grouper eat a lionfish... I did not agree with the treatment of the creature nor the obvious training it had undergone.... This fish had "Obviously" been fed numerous times... Good thing it's eating lionfish, but training naturally aggressive marine life like sharks and eels into relating humans to a food source is not a smart move....
Grouper eating lion fish - YouTube

 

[rayaa3]

I don't know what the right answer is to diminish lionfish population, but everything is aggressive if it is hungry or you piss it off....remembering my ex wife.

Seriously most things have the capacity to hurt you under both of those scenarios.

 

[diver 85]

While I saw no one feeding lion fish to eels while I was there last week....We did have a very curious eel stalk us on one dive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f8qlZAi5UA

Looked to me like a green eel being a green eel......wait till they swim into your shorts-----ouch...1st time I saw that was in 1989 in CZM on a nite dive off Hotel Barracuda's pier, well before Caribbean lionfish..