Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
August 10, 1998
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.