To touch or not to touch?

[on_two_wheels]

Doesn't concern me either. However pulling a nudi out, looking at it and then letting it float down would. Placing you hand on the sand hoping a shrimp climbs on you is ok, grabbing one adn pulling it out of the hole, not so good. Flushing a flounder or ray, bad news, rolling over a rock to see the octopus, bad. Breaking a seafan to get a shot of the seahorse

Okay, I actually think we see eye to eye now. However, I would still like your opinion on my last post. If touching anything presents harm to the ecosystem, how does removing fish, et al, not?

 

[Jim Lapenta]

My mollies actually like to be petted. I've conditioned them to it. Damsel fish like to attack me! Little pains in the ass. I've stroked nurse sharks, would never grab one though.

 

[seaducer]

Okay, I actually think we see eye to eye now. However, I would still like your opinion on my last post. If touching anything presents harm to the ecosystem, how does removing fish, et al, not?

It does. However people need to eat. We have a right to live and eat just like everything else does. But we have a duty to exist in a responsible manner. I don't like the idea of clear cutting forest for farms either, but I like the idea of starving even less But that doesn't mean we can't figure out a way to grow more crops in less space, and try to find herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers that are easier on the environment.

I love fish. I love to see them, and also to eat them. But I also lobby for laws that forces commercial fisherman to change the way they do buisness, and I don't eat certain fish because I do not agree altogether with certain methods like long lining.

I don't hunt because I get zero joy out of killing things. However I suppose you could make the arguement that the guy who kills his own fish is not supporting the commercial industry as much. Six of one half dozen of the other, I guess.

But that all is besides the main point of whether handling wildlife can harm it, and how much of an impact can that harm have. and just because the shark finners are out there doesn't mean we can't examine our own behaviors and make better choices

 

[seaducer]

I think you may have misunderstood the point I tried to make. I love aquariums and I believe that they serve a social good. It just seems funny to me that someone who was so concerned about stressing the creatures in the wild would cite links about how much aquariums can stress fish.

Well we agree on aquariums, I believe in their mission to the point I volunteer at one.

However I fail to see what the rest of your post is about. The point of the web link was handling fish removes their mucous layer, which is a part of their immune system.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

I've read this before. However, in the days of the Kona Surf, all the mantas used to go in very near shore scraping themselves against the rocks in order to get the plankton that gathered near shore.

Just because one event follows another, doesn't mean it was the cause of the first event.

Perhaps Lefty went cruising somewhere that had a high Staph count, while his body was scraped up from the rocks and that was the cause. Or for some reason his immune system was compromised for other reasons. Without empirical evidence, the cause is really just a guess!

Let's see now: Mantas started feeding in front of the Kona Surf in the early '70's and the lights were turned off in '99. Dive op's started leading tours in the early '90's and in the first year it was a popular tour ('92) there was lots of petting. That same year divers started noticing pink patches in the same general areas of the petting. The manta which allowed the most touching showed the largest patches. The dive op's started educating divers and enforcing a no petting policy and soon after the pink patches went away.

In the face of this chain of events your doubts have very little reef to stand on; The manta defense rests since the opponent has no supporting data, just a lay-womans opinion.

 

[Boxcar Overkill]

I didn't even know the no-touchy-the-fishy policy was in dispute. I just assumed everyone agreed that it was bad form, (though many people did it anyway.)

But the fish-molesters make a better point than I was prepared for. I wonder if I've been sold some trendy eco-chic philosophy that doesn't make much sense. I will reconsider my position on this matter.

 

[DivingPanda]

I, too, am in the no-touch camp - seeing is quite amazing enough for me. Last summer on Heron Island, I saw a genius on our boat decide to fluff a lionfish barehanded to get it to swim. I have no idea what he was thinking, if anything, but he managed to escape uninjured.

 

[Ann Marie]

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[MeiLing]

Depending on where you are diving, there are laws prohibiting harassment of endangered animals; turtles are often protected and harassment is in the eye of the person turning you in.

Here in Hawaii, turtles are protected, but many would not be harassed by divers gently cleaning the algae off their backs. Since they are protected I don't clean them.

There is also a Marine Mammal Protection Act, which prohibits harassment. Just as with the above turtle protection, touching is not necessarily harassment but the only time one could touch a dolphin is when it lets you. When this dolphin comes up to divers, she wants to interact!

After petting her a few times, I picked up my scooter to leave. She got up and tried to lay on one of the other scooters. She is a decommissioned suicide bomber and next time I will grab the dorsal fin for the ride she obviously wants to give!

Don't grab her dorsal fin. I've heard that is incorrect and can hurt them. If you're not trained in how to ride one, you might do more harm than you expect. THAT is harrassment!

 

[MeiLing]

Let's see now: Mantas started feeding in front of the Kona Surf in the early '70's and the lights were turned off in '99. Dive op's started leading tours in the early '90's and in the first year it was a popular tour ('92) there was lots of petting. That same year divers started noticing pink patches in the same general areas of the petting. The manta which allowed the most touching showed the largest patches. The dive op's started educating divers and enforcing a no petting policy and soon after the pink patches went away.

In the face of this chain of events your doubts have very little reef to stand on; The manta defense rests since the opponent has no supporting data, just a lay-womans opinion.

Again, still could be another reason unknown to us. Still not empirical evidence. Perhaps the other mantas had it too but never got close enough for folks to notice how bad their patches of pink stuff were. Perhaps a bacterial bloom was happening in some other place they were frequenting that was resolved somehow.

All you have is really a guess that folks touching them was the cause.