Coral Bleaching – Why it happens? Diving Maluku

[TMHeimer]

Reducing your ecological impact is pretty damn easy... There's nothing new to that.
Environmental impact of aviation - Wikipedia is part of it.
Recycling.
Not using chemicals unless absolutely needed. How many times do we see people use bleach when they could just scrub for 1 minute instead...
Not going to places where the oceans are considered a garbage can... Maldive photos show mountains of plastic bottles washed up on islands | Daily Mail Online (see all those bottles in the pictures? Many of those can easily be recycled, even without infrastructures)
Not taking a dive boat if we can, you can do pretty damn good shore dives. Most of those claiming you need a boat to dive are the ones that never dived from shore in the first place.

Forget Indonesia, you have not even seen your local species!

@TMHeimer "There are those who say taking DEAD shells from a beach really hurts the ecology because those shells will break down and... etc. These are not the big problems."
No... there are species that go from shell to shell, which could have made good use the one you just took out because "look ma! so beautiful!"

--not using chemicals, bleach: Good idea, but not something you do while diving anyway. General advice for the world population.
--Not taking a boat: Good idea but not practical. Some places shore diving does suck and some people live miles even from the local quarry that sucks (you're probably not gunna spend tons of $ to fly somewhere to shore dive only, so totally eliminating boat diving is impractical. You would also have to address ALL boats in the ocean, of which dive boats are only a tiny %).
--Species using empty shells: Are you aware of the populations of the various types of Hermit Crabs?-- well, not infinite, but pretty close. I'm not a kid, I am a shell collector since 1969 with a labelled collection (but no need to rehash all the old threads of 10 years ago on that).

 

[Joneill]

--Not taking a boat: Good idea but not practical. Some places shore diving does suck and some people live miles even from the local quarry that sucks (you're probably not gunna spend tons of $ to fly somewhere to shore dive only, so totally eliminating boat diving is impractical. You would also have to address ALL boats in the ocean, of which dive boats are only a tiny %).

...likely wants you to use a row boat for boat diving

 

[Cali_diver]

How? What can I do?

Educate others around you, especially those that are not divers. We can lecture or advise on Scubaboard but alas this is a very small community that already loves the ocean. The trick is to go out into your community and educate the people (especially the kids) that have no idea that their actions are far reaching. Show them pictures of what is down there.... People have no idea...

 

[Patoux01]

--not using chemicals, bleach: Good idea, but not something you do while diving anyway. General advice for the world population.

Not really. You see divers disinfect their BCD on here with hardly anyone saying it is useless How conserve air when necessary. There's many divers that will soak their whole gear in "smell be gone"-kind of **** every day, even if they're diving in 5 hours. Gear only requires decent washing before long storage, else a quick water rinse is more than enough.
So many people use sunscreen before diving because "I'll be sitting 5 minutes on a boat and that's gonna get me hurt".
Many use tons of water, and this comes from a manufacturer. And for "general advice", there's still many people even in countries like Switzerland which is "pretty good" on recycling and ecology that will let the tap run at maximum without using it.

--Not taking a boat: Good idea but not practical. Some places shore diving does suck and some people live miles even from the local quarry that sucks (you're probably not gunna spend tons of $ to fly somewhere to shore dive only, so totally eliminating boat diving is impractical. You would also have to address ALL boats in the ocean, of which dive boats are only a tiny %).

I am strongly against "fun boating", and no, it's not addressing ALL the boats. We can all do something, regardless of what others do. "But look! Others are polluting so why should I do efforts?" is a really poor state of mind. Also, there's quite some boats that have their use and that we cannot, yet, remove. Cargo boats are a necessary evil at the moment.
I believe most claiming "shore diving sucks" have not looked close enough. No I'm not in favor "totally eliminating boat diving", I'm calling for divers to take a closer look at shore diving.
In the same way I'd hope people start considering diving locally instead of all flying to countries at the other end of the globe, and reducing the amount of plane freight (by not ordering everything in other countries).

--Species using empty shells: Are you aware of the populations of the various types of Hermit Crabs?-- well, not infinite, but pretty close. I'm not a kid, I am a shell collector since 1969 with a labelled collection (but no need to rehash all the old threads of 10 years ago on that).

There's also other species that use them as well. Divers Alert Network, Juvenile Octopus Bites Diver
Sure there's a lot, but well, anything you take out wont be there for the next diver (or octopus, or crab, or whoever wanted to go in there in a useful manner).



As @Cali_diver said, we can help educate people as well.

And @Joneill , kayak diving is the next thing I'm doing once I've run out of shore dives. I've dove the same place over 30 times, I'm still not bored, I haven't seen everything there is to see on that spot, so it's gonna take some time before I get there.


Every bit helps, and there's really no reason not to participate.

 

[tilikum]

There is no reason not to participate, but the vast majority, including those on the forums, won't.

 

[Joneill]

I am strongly against "fun boating", and no, it's not addressing ALL the boats. We can all do something, regardless of what others do. "But look! Others are polluting so why should I do efforts?" is a really poor state of mind. Also, there's quite some boats that have their use and that we cannot, yet, remove. Cargo boats are a necessary evil at the moment.
I believe most claiming "shore diving sucks" have not looked close enough. No I'm not in favor "totally eliminating boat diving", I'm calling for divers to take a closer look at shore diving.
In the same way I'd hope people start considering diving locally instead of all flying to countries at the other end of the globe, and reducing the amount of plane freight (by not ordering everything in other countries).

There is no reason not to participate, but the vast majority, including those on the forums, won't.

Gee - thanks for speaking for us when you have absolutely no idea what we do or don't do in our personal lives... nor what we do for a living.

Did you ever stop and think that many of us do live our lives responsibly and some of us may work in industries that are doing far more to address the issues our planet faces than your constant doom and gloom on these forums ever will? ...of course not.

 

[diver0008]

Educate others around you, especially those that are not divers. We can lecture or advise on Scubaboard but alas this is a very small community that already loves the ocean. The trick is to go out into your community and educate the people (especially the kids) that have no idea that their actions are far reaching. Show them pictures of what is down there.... People have no idea...

I am not going to lecture anyone about how to stop the oceans from warming. I do not have the expertise nor the knowledge, which is sort of why I asked what I can do personally, if anything, to stop this supposed problem in the first place. There are plenty of people with partial knowledge up on high horses speaking loudly already. Everyone already knows that polluting is bad, recycling is good, and riding your bike somewhere is better than driving your car.

Telling people that there is a problem is easy. Providing solutions is what is required.

 

[tilikum]

The doom and gloom is real. Your efforts, while very commendable are largely wasted. Demand for fish is at an all time high, we dump filth in every waterway, poaching of endangered species will render several extinct within the decade. I see little reason for optimism.

 

[Doby45]

 

[diver0008]

The doom and gloom is real. Your efforts, while very commendable are largely wasted. Demand for fish is at an all time high, we dump filth in every waterway, poaching of endangered species will render several extinct within the decade. I see little reason for optimism.

I very much agree. There will possibly be some modest technological improvements in the coming years that may help some, but the sheer and growing number of human beings on this planet will be hard to overcome. Personally, I think that any efforts other than population control and outright and enforced bans on certain activites will be futile and not forthcoming, so I am resigned to it happening, even though I really don't see any convincing evidence of it anyway, and have faith that nature will sort it all out one way or the other, while being very much opposed to any net taxes being imposed under the guise of combatting it. Somewhere along the line there is going to be either societal, environmental or ecomonic collapse. The old saying two out of three ain't bad may be the likely scenario. I just want my cheap electric car.