Tourists are wrecking stingrays' eating, sleeping, and mating habits
Skift Take
Tourism actually plays a large part in protecting wildlife species, but tour providers must work towards a sustainable relationship in which animals’ livelihoods and habitats are conserved.
Each stingray on this sandbar off Grand Cayman earns the islands about $500,000 every year in tourism revenue. Globally, this kind of interactive wildlife experience is big business, generating about $165 billion each year worldwide.
Careful monitoring of these primordial-looking creatures revealed that the lifestyle of stingrays on the sandbar [in Stingray City] was barely recognizable as natural stingray behavior at all.
... the most surprising discovery was that the rays of Stingray City were no longer nocturnal. The rays of the sandbar were also much more aggressive towards each other...
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