Do not feed the dolphins off the shores of Fort De Soto Park.



Unless, that is, you have really, really deep pockets.



Stacey Hortsman and her team at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA Fisheries, spent the afternoon at the park posting signs warning of fines of up to $100,000.



NOAA said the signs are going up because it has fielded multiple complaints in the past few months of people feeding wild dolphins from the pier - a practice that is illegal.



Officials say people are harming the animals by feeding them. Experts say the dolphins frequently become entangled in fishing lines. Sometimes the very social dolphins steal fishermen's bait or even eat their catches.



According to NOAA biologists, dolphin feeding is a real problem, as one Sarasota case shows.



Beggar, a dolphin known for begging boaters for food, turned aggressive after humans continued to feed it. Beggar bit more than 20 people before ultimately dying, possibly due to its poor diet.



The goal of NOAA’S effort is to save similar dolphins from the same unfortunate fate.



"A fed dolphin is a dead dolphin," said Stacey Hortsman, NOAA Fisheries.



Fort DeSoto is seeing an uptick in people feeding wild dolphins in recent months.



"It's at most all major fishing areas and what we want to do is just minimize that interaction between man and dolphin," said Jim Wilson, Fort DeSoto Park.



The U.S. government passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972.



"They have their own home ranges and live in very discrete communities where they stay year round and that's the case here in the St. Pete, Tampa Bay area,” said Hortsman.



It’s very difficult to prosecute wild dolphin feeding. In the last two years in Florida, four cases have been tried and settled.



Two more are pending, and one is being investigated. Some of those settled cases ended with $5,000 or more fines.