Ocean
Watch
Monday, August 10, 1998
Hanauma Bay
officials pursue ban
on fish feeding
For decades, people have been feeding fish at Hanauma
Bay.
First the offering was anything in the picnic basket,
such as cheese or crackers. Later, the food of choice became white bread
and frozen peas.
Then, when these foods' plastic bags became a litter
problem, park workers asked people to give only the type of fish food sold
in the park.
Now, Hanauma Bay's administrators would like to ban
fish feeding of any kind at the popular snorkeling site. Why?
"It's not natural," explains park Manager
Alan Hong. "Hanauma Bay is a nature preserve, not an amusement park.
We would like to keep it as natural as possible."
One unnatural aspect of human fish feeding is that it
skews the distribution of fish in the bay. Some species travel from their
normal outer reef habitat to the inner shallows, where most of the feeding
takes place.
This not only puts fish in places they don't belong,
but also crowds out other fish that would normally be there.
The two species most notorious for such inward
migrations are Hawaiian flagtails (aholehole) and chubs (nenue).
Aholehole are shy, nocturnal fish that normally venture
out at night to eat tiny crabs, shrimp and other shelled animals.
But currently at Hanauma Bay, the silvery aholehole
swarm in the shallows all day, darting around human legs to catch free
food.
The other fish people usually see near the shoreline
while tossing fish food are nenue. These bluish-tinged, silver fish are
bigger and more aggressive than aholehole.
Sometimes nenue will swim right up to a person's hand
to snatch food from it. In this way, these bold fish occasionally take a
bit of human skin along with their treat.
This happened to a friend I took to the bay once.
I bought a bag of approved fish food and gave it to
her. With one hand she timidly tossed a few morsels. But she left the hand
holding the food dangling in the water. Before I could intervene, a nenue
lunged for the bag and bit my friend's thumb.
The injury was minor but the experience was major. It
spoiled the snorkeling for my novice friend, and we soon left the water.
Another time, at a marine preserve in the Caribbean, I
watched a man coax his wife into going snorkeling.
"I'm scared," she said, as he helped her into
mask and fins.
"Of what?"
"Of the fish biting me."
The man smiled.
"The fish won't bite you."
But just seconds after the nervous woman eased into the
water, a pair of queen angelfish, obviously accustomed to human handouts,
swam to her hand and bit it.
It wasn't a hard bite but the damage was done. That
woman left the water with a shriek, vowing to never, ever return.
In future hearings, Hanauma Bay officials will ask for
public input on the subject of banning fish feeding at the bay.
No one knows what will happen at the hearings, but my
guess is that some citizens will argue hard to continue the practice. This
is understandable. Fish feeding at Hanauma Bay is not only fun, it's
practically a tradition.
But it's time to move on. People don't feed wildlife in
parks anymore. This old-fashioned practice distorts normal populations and
causes conflict between animals and people.
Also, we don't need plastic food wrappers littering the
place - still a problem, Hong reports.
Hanauma Bay is the perfect place to show people the
natural beauty and amazing diversity of life on a Hawaiian coral reef.
To do this, we need to stop teaching the bay's fish to
be beggars and let them live naturally.
