Recreational fish feeding: Understanding impacts for tourism management

Fish feeding is one of the most seeked activities among coastal tourism in coral reef areas. The easy interaction on water surface makes it one of the preferred ways for most tourists. This worldwide spread action affects... [ view full abstract ]

Fish feeding is one of the most seeked activities among coastal tourism in coral reef areas. The easy interaction on water surface makes it one of the preferred ways for most tourists. This worldwide spread action affects specially developing countries in tropical zones such as Brazil and Thailand. We try to compare the fish feeding activities on the coral reefs of those two countries using a literature background. Studies performed on both countries identified around 20 reef fish species aggregating on usual feeding locals or during the feeding itself, although the richness of this group is 3x higher in Thailand. Records indicate bread is a common feed used both in Brazil and Thailand, though in the first, other food remnants and dog food were also detected. The damselfish genus Abudefduf is the most representative in all studies about this topic, being A. saxatilis and A. vaigiensis the dominant species in Brazil and Thailand respectively. Similarly communities on both countries were composed mainly by omnivorous, followed by herbivores and mobile invertebrate feeders. Although some local differences might be regarded in both cases, the reef fish communities seem to react in similar ways to tourism feeding, both in composition and behavior. This kind of activity has few and local studies, though its impact can reach poorly understood levels on reef fish ecology, behavior and even physiology, due to malnutrition. More in deep studies are needed, specially in ethology, since changes in behavior can be subtle are yet not clear.