|  Author | Topic: Please don't feed the fish!! (Read 57 times) |
Dive Bunnie
Administrator
member is offline
![[avatar]](http://www.divebunnie.com/graphics/forum/minibunnienewest.jpg)
![[homepage]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/buttons/www_sm.gif)
Joined: May 2003
Gender: Female 
Posts: 596
Location: Sharm el Sheikh
Karma: 22 |  | Please don't feed the fish!!
« Thread Started on Sept 20, 2009, 6:27am » | ![[Quote]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/buttons/quote.gif) |
Fish feeding is one of my gripes. It is illegal here in Sharm, yet we regularly see it happen on a daily basis. Especially on local dive sites on the fringing reef, where there is usually a hotel based on the nearby shore.
I know it makes the fish horde around you, and I know it is probably quite good fun, but they aren't designed to eat bread, they are designed to eat their allocated food found within the jigsaw puzzle that is their environment.
There are a few issues concerned with feeding wild fish...
Firstly it is not good for the individual fish.. we regularly see dead fish around the beach areas where snorklers swim out armed with bags of bread for the fish (sooo infuriating as these are sometimes given to them by the hotel staff, even though it is illegal). The fish don't know what is bad for them, they see food, it tastes ok, so they eat it... and eventually some of them die as a result. It is soooo sad to see a dead blue spotted ray, puffer fish, or stone fish. One of the more amazing creatures lifeless on the bottom.
It affects the balance of their environment; if they are not eating their usual prey, that then gets the chance to proliferate beyond its natural limits, algae will start to overgrow, other fish will overwhelm their competition etc.
It affects their natural behaviour; in Sharm we are lucky, as the fish are not scared of us, so we see them milling around, getting on with life as normal, quite natural really, which is great. However when we dive in an area where the fish have been fed, they will gather around you expectantly, all rather lovely when it is a bunch of butterfly fish, not so when it is a titan trigger fish (known to be territorial and in possession of a rather large set of teeth). And again it is just not their natural behaviour.
If only people would read the signs on the beach, and if only more beaches had these signs (in several languages). The more tourists we get in Sharm, the less divers, the more this happens I am sad to say. Sometimes it is pure ignorance, so not the snorkler's fault, although sometimes it is blatant and arrogant disregard for the rules. The latter are the ones that truly wind me up.
Sadly I have had many an argument and sadly I come off looking like the mad diver with a problem.  Maybe I should learn exactly how to explain it in several languages... ahh eureka!
|
Fish are Friends!
Keep diving
Dive Bunnie
![[image]](http://www.divebunnie.com/graphics/forum/divingbannerforum.jpg) |
|
swishybubbles
Guest
| | Re: Please don't feed the fish!!
« Reply #1 on Sept 23, 2009, 4:35am » | |
Well put. 
| |
|
waterbabe
Full Members
member is offline
![[avatar]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/avatars/sexy.gif)
Joined: Jun 2003
Gender: Female
Posts: 97
Location: Bristol
Karma: 4 | | Re: Please don't feed the fish!!
« Reply #2 on Nov 8, 2009, 7:51am » | |
Or fish the fish!
Saw loads of fishing line on sites in Ras Mohammed last time I was there! I thought it was a no fishing zone??? It not only looks bad when the reef is all tangled up with fishing line, but it is depleting the sea of the very reason people go there to visit.
Just doesn't make sense.
|
peace out
Waterbabe |
|
DIVEDIVAR
Guest
| | Re: Please don't feed the fish!!
« Reply #3 on Nov 14, 2009, 8:11am » | |
yeh I saw peeps feeding fish off the beach when I went to sharm. And in other places we were encouraged to take banana when we went snorkelling. The fish all really went for it. I didn't know any better sorry 
| |
| |
|
![[Home]](http://www.divebunnie.com/graphics/forum/forumhome.gif)
![[Help]](http://www.divebunnie.com/graphics/forum/help.gif)
![[Search]](http://www.divebunnie.com/graphics/forum/search.gif)
![[Login]](http://www.divebunnie.com/graphics/forum/login.gif)
![[Register]](http://divebunnie.com/graphics/forum/register.gif)
![[Search This Thread]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/search2.gif)
![[Reply]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/buttons/reply.gif)
![[Send Topic To Friend]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/buttons/sendtopic.gif)
![[Print]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/buttons/print.gif)
Logged