[Coral-List] Summary on Goliath Grouper Encounters

Sarah Frias-Torres sfrias_torres at hotmail.com
Thu Nov 15 13:03:38 EST 2012








Dear all,thanks to those who contributed providing comments to my goliath grouper encounter email. 
Following a suggestion, I've contacted the videographer to add a disclaimer in the YouTube video description. 
The goliath grouper I interacted with is well known in that location for being human friendly to the point of being flirtatious. 
Assuming divers will engage in touching goliath groupers after seeing the video is misleading. Any touchy diver will soon enrage fellow divers in the group because an unwanted approach is greeted with the tail end of fleeing groupers and a bunch of divers wanting to kill the offender.
That said, different goliath groupers have different personalities. They range from the remote "don't even look at me" type to the playful "rub my belly" dog type. This is what I've seen and experienced. Yes, I'm talking about animal personalities, a subject that might upset some people in this list. Here's a key paper:
Wolf et al (2007). Life history trade-offs favour the evolution of animal personalities. Nature 447, 581-584 (31 May 2007). doi:10.1038/nature05835


Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D. Independent ScientistTwitter: @GrouperDocBlog: http://grouperluna.wordpress.comhttp://independent.academia.edu/SarahFriasTorres


 		 	   		  


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