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Supplemental Feeding For Ecotourism Reverses Diel Activity And Alters Movement Patterns And Spatial Distribution Of The Southern Stingray, Dasyatis Americana, Mark J. Corcoran, Bradley M. Wetherbee, Mahmood S. Shivji, Matthew D. Potenski, Demian D. Chapman, Guy M. Harvey

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Southern stingrays, Dasyatis americana, have been provided supplemental food in ecotourism operations at Stingray City Sandbar (SCS), Grand Cayman since 1986, with this site becoming one of the world’s most famous and heavily visited marine wildlife interaction venues. Given expansion of marine wildlife interactive tourism worldwide, there are questions about the effects of such activities on the focal species and their ecosystems. We used a combination of acoustic telemetry and tag-recapture efforts to test the hypothesis that human-sourced supplemental feeding has altered stingray activity patterns and habitat use at SCS relative to wild animals at control sites. Secondarily, we …