Hammerschlag,
N., A.J. Gallagher, J. Wester, J. Luo, and J.S. Ault. 2012. Don’t bite the hand
that feeds: assessing ecological impacts of provisioning ecotourism on an apex
marine predator. Functional Ecology: 1-10.
Ecotourism
is a responsible form of travel that combines involvement in environmental conservation,
helping out the local community, and getting to experience a cool part of
nature. As we learned in class, ecotourism is an essential part of
conservation, as it provides the funds and involvement necessary to head
conservation projects, that otherwise would not be as successful. However, some
ecotourism practices could have a negative impact on conservation, disturbing
the natural activities of the very animals it is trying to protect. For
example, there are cases where food is used to attract wildlife for tourist
viewing pleasure, such as the shark diving industry, where chum (fish parts and
blood) is put into the water to bring sharks into the area around the divers.
There is
much debate about whether this practice negatively impacts the normal behaviour
and ecology of the sharks. Hammerschlag and colleagues (2012) decided to
investigate this issue by using satellite telemetry to study the long range
movement patterns of tiger sharks (Galeocerdo
cuvier; the largest apex predator in tropical waters) in response to dive
tourism. They looked at two separate populations of tiger sharks: one in
Florida where shark feeding is illegal, and one in the Bahamas where this type
of ecotourism is regularly used. One
might expect that shark feeding may make the sharks more reliant on that type
of easy meal, and restrict how far they travel from that area. This could pose a threat to humans in the area, if the sharks associate humans with food, and it could also have ecological consequences by altering the normal diet and movement of the sharks. Yet,
Hammerschlag and researchers’ results suggest that this is not the case. They found that there was no difference between the migration patterns and habitat use between the two populations.One
reason they suggest to explain this is that tiger sharks are opportunistic
foragers, so they go wherever there is the highest productivity of food.
Because this
shark feeding practice does not seem to have a negative effect on the sharks,
there seems to be no reason to stop it, as it brings in large amounts of money
to help with the conservation efforts. However, some species may be more
sensitive to human interference than others, so wildlife provisioning should
not be used without thorough research of the possible impacts to the behaviour
and ecology of the species.
Video summary of research: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iFl7BxbnXQ
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Very interesting. My first instinct would be that it would affect their behaviour. Kind of cool that it doesn't and therefore shark baiting (tiger sharks anyway) for ecotourism can help with conservation efforts. Did you see any other studies done on other species of sharks and if they got different results?
ReplyDeleteNo, I believe this is the first study of its kind so far, but I bet more studies will come soon after this one because of their interesting results
DeleteVery interesting! A good example of ecotourism affecting the animals they are observing is primates, as seen in the presentation yesterday!
ReplyDeleteIt is definitely important to investigate the possible affects that ecotourism could have on the species being observed. Even if there is an affect on the species, Im sure there would be ways of altering the way they are going about observing the animal so that ecotourism does not need to stop, but at the same time the species wont get harmed
Great blog Ashley! Thats a relief that this species of shark is not effected by human feedings. I will never understand why people pay large amounts of money to "swim" with sharks, I would be petrified, however, I'm glad the money those silly people pay is going to good use. I wonder if a large portion of the money received form shark-related tourism will go towards understanding its effects on a wide range of shark species that we are currently interacting with.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good example of how we cannot generalize our conservation findings to many species, because as you mentioned Tiger sharks have opportunistic feeding patterns while other sharks may not, and the act of feeding them then has different effects. I hope that work like this supports the need to get a good idea of the individual characteristics of all species!
ReplyDeleteCan anyone say eeeekkkk!!! I am not a fan of sharks at all and have trouble going into the ocean and would never even think about going in specifically to look at them eat around me !!! but regardless it is an interesting concept and you would think that they would change and stay closer to the easy meal ... kind of like bears and garbage, did they do any studies on other types of sharks??
ReplyDelete