Alex Trelinski
CLIMATE CHANGE causing seas to hot up may be behind increasing cases of fish biting swimmers in Mallorca.
Several bathers have suffered bite marks caused by fish over the summer, especially in the Migjorn area of the island.
Some swimmers have even been left with small bleeding wounds.
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Ron Farage, Assistant Curator at Palma Aquarium said: “There are no studies into this, but the reason behind what’s happening could be that the temperature of the water is higher.”
“And these fish are less scared, in this case of human beings, when they are more hungry, which is a consequence in summer of this increase in the temperature of their natural habitat.”
“That’s why they come nearer to the beach and shoreline,” he suggested.
Farage said the biters were younger members of the Sparidae family of fish, commonly called sea breams and porgies, most of which possess grinding molar-like teeth.
Despite the inconvenience, he added that bathers should not be worried, as the fish were ‘harmless’.
“People shouldn’t be scared of them, because they’re not poisonous and they don’t do any real damage,” he concluded.
Nevertheless the attacks are shocking at the time to swimmers like Montse Terradas who had a surprise encounter with the biting fish.
“I felt something grazing by me and then discovered I had a wound,” he said.
“There were wounds with blood. The same thing happened to my sister and we had to receive assistance from a lifeguard who said he had seen about 15 people already that day.”
