http://www.sciencedirect.com/…/article/pii/S0006320710004908

Once in Marine Ecology Progress Series in 2010, Brunschweiler and McKenzie vs Clua et. al. changes the argumentative jabs to each other in the prolonging debate of provisioning the wild animal vs animal behavioral change. While Brunschweiler based his research on 9 years long Fiji’s Bull Shark behavior on provisioning, Chlua et.al. claimed their argument on biased assumption.

This paper presents other virtue on provisioning, based on more than 20 years experience of tourism related provisioning of Caribbean Reef Shark in the Bahamas. It has been known for a long period since Carwardine and Watterson (2002) claimed that 40% of 267 globally distributed shark viewing sites use form of attractant (chum or bait) to increase the encounter rate. Employed acoustic telemetry, isotope sample as well as shark identification and behavioral observations, it is found that the provisioning is kept at minimum energy requirement (770 g per shark) to make highly unlikely that provisioning is the sole source of energy for this shark species.

More importantly, provisioning also did not appear to affect the extent of movement away from home receivers (all sharks traveled similar daily minimum distances suggesting that successful acquisition of bait did not lead to smaller foraging ranges). The writer beliefs that if the provisioning carefully conducted, this has the potential to be effective strategy that can contribute to apex predator conservation.