{"id":60902,"date":"2013-03-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-researcher-tourist-fed-stingrays-change-their-ways\/"},"modified":"2013-03-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T00:00:00","slug":"uri-researcher-tourist-fed-stingrays-change-their-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2013\/03\/uri-researcher-tourist-fed-stingrays-change-their-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 researcher: Tourist-fed stingrays change their ways"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tStudy of world-famous Stingray City finds human interaction drastically alters stingray behavior<\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 18, 2013 — Stingrays living in one of the world\u2019s most famous and heavily visited ecotourism sites \u2014 Stingray City\/Sandbar in the Cayman Islands \u2014 have profoundly changed their ways, raising questions about the impact of so-called \u201cinteractive ecotourism\u201d on marine wildlife.<\/p>\n


\nThe study was published today in the journal PLOS ONE. <\/p>\n


\nResearchers from the 溏心vlog免费B站 and Nova Southeastern University\u2019s Guy Harvey Research Institute studied the southern stingray population at Stingray City \u2014 a sandbar in the Cayman Islands that draws nearly a million visitors each year to feed, pet and swim with its stingrays \u2014 to assess how the intensive ecotourism has affected the animals\u2019 behavior. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cHuman wildlife interactions are expanding all over the world, so it\u2019s important to take pause and think about how these activities are affecting the biology of the animals,\u201d said 溏心vlog免费B站 researcher Brad Wetherbee.<\/p>\n


\nThe researchers found that Stingray City\u2019s stingrays show distinctly different patterns of activity than their wild counterparts, who don\u2019t enjoy daily feedings or close human contact.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe saw some very clear and very prominent behavioral changes, and were surprised by how these large animals had essentially become homebodies in a tiny area,\u201d said study co-author Mahmood Shivji, a professor at the NSU Oceanographic Center and director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute. <\/p>\n


\nWild stingrays are active at night and solitary \u2014 they forage through the night over large distances to find food, and rarely cross paths with other stingrays. To see if Stingray City\u2019s fed stingrays stray from this behavior, the research team tagged and monitored both wild and fed stingrays over the course of two years and compared their patterns of movement.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cA prominent change was that fed stingrays reversed their natural daily rhythms, becoming active during the day and resting at night \u2014 a complete contrast to their wild counterparts,\u201d said Wetherbee. <\/p>\n


\nThey also didn\u2019t mind rubbing shoulders with their neighbors: At least 164 stingrays abandoned the species\u2019 normal solitary behavior, crowding together in less than a quarter square mile of space at Stingray City. They even formed schools and fed together. The fed stingrays mated and became pregnant year-round, instead of during a specific mating season, and also showed signs of unusual aggression, biting each other more frequently than their wild counterparts.<\/p>\n


\nThese results suggest that human-provided food can dramatically change how even large, highly mobile ocean animals behave \u2014 with potentially serious consequences. There are likely to be health costs that come with these behavior changes, which could be detrimental to the animals\u2019 wellbeing in the long term, the researchers conclude.<\/p>\n


\n \tStingray City means big business in the Cayman Islands, where each stingray generates as much as $500,000 annually in tourism income. The research team plans to continue to monitor Stingray City\u2019s population to track its health \u2014 and the industry\u2019s impact \u2014 over time. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cRight now, these animals have no protection at all,\u201d said study co-author Guy Harvey, who initiated the project. \u201cWithout more studies like these, we won\u2019t know what that means for the wildlife or if we need to take action. It\u2019s unclear how much of the stingray\u2019s daily diet comes from tourism provided food, but the good news is we have seen the animals forage when tourists are absent suggesting that these animal are not completely dependent on these handouts.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPhoto submitted by Brad Wetherbee.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Study of world-famous Stingray City finds human interaction drastically alters stingray behavior KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 18, 2013 — Stingrays living in one of the world\u2019s most famous and heavily visited ecotourism sites \u2014 Stingray City\/Sandbar in the Cayman Islands \u2014 have profoundly changed their ways, raising questions about the impact of so-called \u201cinteractive ecotourism\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}