So… your swimming along and you come across a wolf eel, cool stuff. You know one of their favorite foods is sea urchins, so you hunt one down and feed it to the eel. Great stuff right? You got to feed a wild animal in their own environment!

Although this scenario is tempting, please, please, please don’t do this!

There is a balance in nature, predator and prey, that exists in all the animal kingdoms.

This balance can and is usually thrown off by humans. Some of the cases are very innocent, but the impact can last a long time.

By feeding underwater sea life you could be putting yourself, the animals, or someone else at risk.

Here’s how and why:

Yourself –

An accidental bite can cause major damage to you and could lead to a panicked diver situation or a visit to a clinic, at the very least. In example, for years people have been baiting sharks so tourists can swim with them. When someone finally gets bit they are just amazed, sharks sure are dangerous, huh!? The bottom line is these are wild animals! They are not malicious, their goal is to fill their stomachs.

The underwater critter-

Feeding an underwater animal is not good for the animal, because they learn to trust humans. Part of the problem is, not all humans are so kind to animals. Some people hunt for food and you are teaching the animals to be easy targets. Others will harm an animal out of their own ignorance and fear because the animal approached them, simply looking for the handout they have become accustomed to.

By feeding them you are changing their natural habits, training the animal to come to you for food or come out of hiding when they know divers are around. Many of the foods that have been fed to fish are not healthy for them, pizza and frozen veggies are, I’m sure, not usually found on their menu.

As a result of feeding fish, the fish are not doing their jobs. People have been giving them easy snacks, so they can get a close up photo or show a buddy or maybe it is your “underwater pet”. This hurts their environment they live in because they should be finding their own food and eating what is natural to them. They are part of the clean up crew. When they don’t feed on natural diets, an imbalance occurs as their prey move toward destructive overpopulation.

Someone else-

What if the next person diving in that area doesn’t have that snack? The animal has learned from humans that they are a food source, and may be become aggressive.

Thinking back on my first dive in Mexico. While we were waiting for our dive master on the bottom we saw a school of blue fish. (WOW COOL!) They swam past, then a minute later they were back- except this time they were all over my head biting and pulling my hair. I had gotten my hair braided, and when they did the braids they put beads in the ends of them. I don’t know if this could have happened anywhere, or if I looked like a feeding station for fish, but we were in a common dive area where there are a lot of tourists. It makes me wonder if the fish in the area were used to human interaction by being fed? They obviously were not the least bit concerned by me being there!

Conclusion

Many areas around the world had been selling food to tourists to feed the fish. The adverse effects it has had on the fish and the ocean environment has taken many years to discover. In these areas the corals were suffering, the fish more aggressive and people had been bitten. Hopefully the effects of fish feeding can be reversed. Some of these areas have stopped selling bait food and have put up signs for no feed zones.

Everybody dives for their own reason, mine happens to be because I love the critters. I look forward to seeing them every time I go down. I want it to be in a natural way though, not where I’m baiting them to me. It took me two years to see my first eel while diving, but it was worth the wait.

I’ve been trying to remember an old environmental saying and relate it to diving-

Shoot only photos, don’t muck up the bottom, and take only memories or something to that effect.

If you love the animals and want to feed them, I would suggest volunteering at your local aquarium or a sea life rehab clinic where the animals need to be fed. This can be both rewarding and educational for you and others, and you will be making a positive impact!

Stay safe and Happy diving!
Christy Longdon

Here are a few web sites to check out for more information.

http://myfwc.com/RULESANDREGS/Saltwater_Regulations_FishFeed.htm

http://www.cdnn.info/special-report/sharkbyte/sharkbyte.html

http://www.coral.org/where_we_work/asia/pacific/hawaii/fish_feeding_campaign/more

When do you graduate from a diver-in-training to a good buddy (or what others call a team diver)?

SCUBA is a fun and relaxing sport, but the reality is that we don’t belongin the underwater environment. For this reason, we have to ensure that all our systems are working properly and that our dive buddy will not cause us stress, but rather be there to assist us competently in the event of an emergency.

How comfortable would you be if your buddy was constantly leaving you behind, changing positions and speed, and you never knew where they were? What if they got disoriented and headed the wrong way, but made no attempt to find you? How about if they were always running out of air or their equipment was so poorly maintained that it was not reliable? These are not comforting thoughts to me and I hope they are not to you, either!

When our sport first came to be, the original underwater explorers were single/solo divers. These brave and adventurous men made incredible dives, and some of them lost their life as a result. Many new explorers have found that when diving with a well trained team that shares a single common goal, exploration dives are safer and the explorers get to go farther. They also get to go home! Many in the sport diving community have watched the success of theses explorers and have tried to translate the philosophy to non-exploration/recreational sport divers.

So what exactly is a good buddy?

A diver that actively participates on the dive planning.
A diver that will agree to assign a dive leader, but will still be self-sufficient during the dive.
A diver with well maintained equipment that is suitable for their type of diving and their area conditions.
A diver that will follow the plan, and maintain a position in the water in relation to the dive leader (so that he does not have to always be looking for the buddy diver).
A diver that would not hesitate to call the dive if they had a problem.
A diver with good gas management and buoyancy control.

All of these are qualities for a really good buddy. You may never appreciate the skills of a good buddy if you always dive with one person, but if you don’t have a regular buddy, you will most definitely appreciate good skills when and if you should ever need them!

Information and communication is the key: agreeing before the dive on dive plan and the what ifs, and checking gear and reviewing hand signals before starting the dive. There is nothing more difficult than trying to deal with a problem when you are not able to communicate with your buddy underwater.

On some dives, it is very possible to have a buddy assigned to you by a DM on a dive boat. It may be difficult to assess this divers ability. Here are some questions should you ask this diver up front, BEFORE you enter the water with them:

What are they hoping to get out of the dive (cover and see as much territory as possible, slow dive to take pictures, etc.)
What is their training level, and how recent is their experience?
What is their air consumption rate, and are they willing to end the dive as a team, based on a pre-agreed gas limit?
What parameters do they see for the dive “ How deep, how long, and what activities? If they propose things youre uncomfortable with (like penetrating wrecks) are they willing to forego that to keep the team together?

Remember, you can’t ask to dive with a good buddy if you are not one yourself. If your buddies always have to look for you because you get easily distracted, easily lose the group, tend to lose your buoyancy, or you run low or out of air, you should do everyone a favor (ESPECIALLY YOURSELF!) and get some more training!

Here are a couple simple training recommendations:

Practice your basic skills on every dive, even when you are diving on your favorite spot where you have 100 logged dives. Skills include good buoyancy control and hovering quietly, as well as mask flooding and gas sharing.
Take some entry level tech diving classes even if you’re not interested in tech diving. The skills you learn will help you on every dive and may just save you or your buddy somewhere down the road.