Blog/News

Important Reasons Why We Don’t Feed The Fish

If you’re doing a boat sightseeing tour around Phuket you may occasionally come across fish feeding. It is done to attract fish to the boat and entertain the tourists but many people aren’t aware that this practice is bad for the fish and the environment alike, and should be avoided to protect our reefs.

There are hundreds of species of fish on our reefs around Phuket which you can see on your diving or snorkeling daytrip, however in some areas such as Coral Island where uneducated tour boat operators sometimes feed the fish, you will see only 1 or 2 species and this is due to the detrimental effects of fish-feeding. Those species can be seen in large numbers which can look impressive but if left to their own devices there would be many more species of fish present in the water, not just 1 or 2.

Here we explain why we don’t feed the fish.

Unnatural Diet

Turtle And Divers On A Phuket Reef

Just like humans, fish need the right type of food in their diets and it is essential that they eat important amino acids, of which they can only receive from their natural diet – not bread, or scraps of food that humans eat. Bread is particularly bad as it contains yeast and when eaten by fish, expands in their digestive system causing health problems. The most resilient fish may survive however others die or fall ill and are taken by predators.

Unnatural Behaiviour

Hand-feeding fish and other marine life promotes a behaviour called conditioning, where the animal learns to associate humans with food instead of being naturally cautious around humans. A fish’s natural diet is quite complicated and may be seasonal, daily, or temporal. When fish start to anticipate meal times with humans, it interferes with their natural feeding cycles and they are more vulnerable to predators. A healthy marine community relies on competition for habitat and food and different species feed during different times of the day. Introducing an unnatural meal disturbs these competitive relationships and can lead to the decline of certain species and over-population of others. In a location where fish are regularly fed there are often feeding frenzies and people present may get injured.

Damage To The Environment

Hand-feeding fish takes a toll on the marine environment too. Adding food to the water around reefs increases nutrient levels which then increases the growth of harmful algae that damage corals. The majority of reef fish are grazers, meaning they only eat algae. They keep the growth of the algae on coral reefs under control so that the reefs aren’t smothered. By feeding fish their behaviour is modified so that they no longer graze on the harmful algae that need to be removed from the reef, the algae may become overgrown. Eventually the reef is destroyed and the habitat of many species is lost.

Be Responsible On Your Phuket Diving Trip

Be Responsible

We encourage you to be responsible on your sightseeing tour or on your snorkeling or diving trip.
Don’t feed the fish or throw any food scraps overboard, place them in the bin instead.
And if you see someone feeding the fish, please ask them to stop doing it and if you can, explain to them why. Share this information with your friends and family too.

Please help us to protect Phuket’s reefs. Thank you 🙂

The Benefits of Becoming an Enriched Air Diver

If you haven’t got your Enriched Air Diver (Nitrox) certification yet, you may be wondering if it’s worth it and what the real benefits are and why you should become Nitrox certified. In this post we look at the 5 main advantages of nitrox and when you might use it.

What is Nitrox?

Nitrox refers to any gas mixture composed of nitrogen and oxygen where the percentage of nitrogen is reduced and oxygen increased. Common mixes are 32% oxygen and 36% oxygen.

The 5 Main Benefits

1. Extended Bottom Time

This is the number one benefit of diving on nitrox. The lower percentage of nitrogen in the breathing gas mixture allows you to safely extend your dive times without increasing the need for decompression stops. The less nitrogen there is in your breathing gas, the slower the nitrogen absorption will be at a given depth. For example, according to no-decompression dive tables, a diver using nitrox 36 may stay up to 50 minutes at 26 metres, while a diver using air may only stay a maximum of 27 minutes at this depth.

2. Reduced Risk of The Decompression Sickness

The reduced percentage of nitrogen is also advantageous in reducing nitrogen uptake in the body’s tissues and so reducing the risk of decompression sickness, which is also known as the bends.

3. Shorter Surface Intervals

A diver using nitrox absorbs less nitrogen for a given depth and dive time than a diver using air. This means that diving on nitrox you have less nitrogen to off-gas during a surface interval, which can shorten the required surface interval drastically.

Get Nitrox Certified and Stay Down Longer

4. Longer Repetitive Dive Times

Nitrox becomes especially beneficial for divers who are doing more than one dive per a day. A diver using nitrox will have a longer allowable bottom time on a repetitive dive than a diver using air because the diver using nitrox has absorbed less nitrogen. This is very useful on our 3 dive Phuket diving day trips or on one of our liveaboard trips. Normally the last dive of the day can get quite short, but diving on nitrox you not only potentially extend the earlier nitrox dives, but also the later dives.

5. Reduced Fatigue

Many divers claim to feel less tired after diving on nitrox than after diving on air, especially after doing multiple dives in a day. By reducing a diver’s nitrogen absorption, nitrox may also reduce a diver’s post-dive fatigue. This has yet to be substantiated with scientific evidence but if you feel better, that can only be a good thing.

When Does Nitrox Not Help?

Nitrox is not beneficial for all dives as it increases the risk of oxygen toxicity so you are limited in depth, depending on the percentage of oxygen in your tank. So you would not want to use in on very deep dives. See here for more info. Also, if you consume your air very quickly within air no-decompression limits then nitrox probably won’t help extend your bottom time much.

To Conclude

In general, diving on nitrox gives you longer dives and reduced nitrogen intake, which means getting more out of your dives while being further away from decompression sickness. It is great to have on your liveaboard trip and many liveaboards around the world including our Similans liveaboard MV Pawara offer FREE nitrox to certified divers.

So if you’re thinking of doing the Nitrox course then our advice is, do it – it is well worth it. You learn alot, increase your diving knowledge and it will no doubt come in very handy on many of your dives.

For additional information or to book your Nitrox (Enriched Air Diver) course with us send us an email  or enquire here and one of our team will respond to you 🙂