Abstract

Ecotourism encounters with wildlife have become increasingly popular world-wide, including interactions with marine wildlife (Orams 2002). Marine wildlife-oriented ecotourism often involves provisioning of animals to increase the reliabil-ity of human-animal interactions. While these practices may increase the enjoyment of tourists, the long-term effects on wildlife are often unclear. The Stingray City Sandbar (SCS), Grand Cayman, is a location where southern stingrays, Hypanus americana, are provisioned for ecotourism and is one of the world’s most famous marine wildlife interaction sites. A number of behavioral and physiological changes in the SCS stingrays have been documented (Seminuk et al. 2008, 2009), although the long-term effects of site attachment to the SCS on stingrays is unknown. Because of the immense economic value of this tour operation concerns have been raised about the number and health of stingrays at SCS. However, understanding of the dynamics of the SCS has been hampered by lack of information about the composition of the aggrega-tion. We investigated movements of stingrays in relation to the feeding site using acoustic telemetry and characterized demographic and temporal patterns of this stingray aggregation by examining 13+ years of tagging data and began intense monitoring of the aggregation by implementing structured censuses of the aggregation.

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