Don't Feed the Wild Fish

Just a quick news update that I thought was pretty cool. There's this organization, right. It's called the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL). You've probably heard about it if you've ever searched up "coral reefs" on Google or some other search engine. They're pretty big on the coral reef conservation thing. They're based in California, by the way.

Anyway, I came across this cool news article on MarketWatch. Apparently Leisure Pro? The scuba diving company? They've teamed up with CORAL to help spread awareness on endangered coral reefs. That's pretty cool that there are things being done to make a difference. Anyway, Leisure Pro has taken the first step (of hopefully many) to help the reefs by not selling fish food. They've got this ideology that "the practice of feeding wild fish can have disastrous effects on coral reefs by altering predator-prey relationships and pushing delicate ecosystems out of balance." There's this example they use: "when people feed algae grazers like surgeonfish, the fish fill up on fish food and eat less algae, causing the algae to flourish and potentially smother the reef."

That's pretty similar to how in Singapore and in places like Nepal, you're not supposed to feed wild monkeys. Because they grow dependent on people and it just messes a lot of stuff up. Same with bears in national parks in the USA. I don't even think Hanauma Bay in Oahu (that place is amazing) allows you to buy fish food to feed the fish anymore either. Which is good.

Here's another quote from the beginning of the article:

"In observance of International Year of the Reef 2008, Leisure Pro is drawing on its extensive customer base to educate the public about reef destruction and the ways CORAL is working to protect coral reefs and the communities that depend on them. "

So yeah. I just thought that was cool to share. :) Check out what CORAL is doing sometime. They've got some really neat stuff on their site.

posted by Sage @ 8/27/2008 11:31:00 AM Comments: 0