Coral Reef Health

[kwesler]

Perhaps someone else can give us accurate information. It is being charged to anyone diving the Speigel Grove, but my understanding is that it is supposed to be charged to anyone diving the reefs. There is a non-profit corp administering the $.

I bought a lifetime membership, so cannot speak to the yearly $.

I bought the lifetime membership to support something I care about.

Anyone can complain and put down ideas-ain't nuthin easier. What's HARD is doing good...

 

[Genesis]

and make your case that it is in my best interest to do so and you are very likely to get some kind of positive response.

Lie to me or attempt to coerce from me funds for a cause that is packaged and promoted as "essential" or "mandatory", as is being done with the SG, and you're likely to get a VERY different sort of response from me.

 

[kwesler]

The issue is explained in the article via the link posted above-read it and come up with something, or be yet another person p***ing on the campfire

 

[Genesis]

How does reading it, and understanding the issue, relate to taxing scuba divers?

It doesn't.

Reefs are impacted by a number of both natural and man-made phenomena.

This same claptrap has been used in an attempt to ban Type I MSDs in the Keys. So far it has failed, but who knows what insanity will follow next.

Why has it failed? Because the science doesn't support the premise.

A flush from a Type I MSD contains, essentially, zero bacterial count. It does contain some nutrients though, which is what everyone is carping about.

However, and this is the point, the largest contributors to those nutrient and poison levels are from land runoff - fertilizers and pesticides that are intentionally put on the land by homeowners, developers and farmers in an attempt to have lawns, golf courses and crops. Never mind things like oil drips from cars on the roadways that are washed into the water by rainstorms.

To attempt to ban Type I MSDs as a "means of helping the reefs" ignores the fact that as a percentage of impact what man contributes through boating discharges is almost impossible to find in the statistical analysis.

Its simply that attacking boaters is easy and cheap, since most of the boaters in the area are not local residents and thus cannot fight such an action (due to the inability to be able to VOTE on the issue!)

Ditto for any proposed "scuba tax".

The problem neither lies with the scuba diver nor can it be fixed by the scuba diver. If you want to fix the problem then do all of the following:

1. Ban hurricanes (good luck!)
2. Ban all pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer use within 200 miles of any coral reef (good luck!)
3. Ban all population growth in these areas (good luck!)
4. Ban all hydrocarbon release, intentional or not, in these areas - which means banning CARS. Oh, you have to ban horses too, since horses have to take a dump and when they do, we're right back to the same problem if that gets washed into the water.

In short there is no solution to the problem that lends itself to a "simple or quick fix".

If you want to see what fertilizers do, check out the "dead zone" off the mouth of the Mississippi. Its phenomenally bad, growing, and entirely the result of our agricultural practices in this country.

All courtesy of ADM and others, of course.

Your idea of a "mandatory C-card tax" will simply be met by people going off-cert and buying compressors. I know that I'll do it, encourage others to do it, and generally raise cain - including trying to find a way to shove any tax you propose of this kind back down your throat so that its full impact, multipled by however many people you try to impose it upon - comes back upon your personal family fortune and wealth.

I hate thieves and liars, and attempting to lay either this problem or its solution at the feet of scuba divers constitutes both.

 

[kwesler]

and settle down! There is an issue that needs to be addressed...people of good will do their best to address problems. I spend my life as the head of a non-profit trying to make the world a little bit better. Please do not lecture me; I have been working for common good at considerable personal sacrifice for a number of years. I don't talk-I do it. I also put my money where my mouth is.

If I understand your response, it can be summarized as "nothing can be done:-fair enough. Your point is made. Let's see if anyone else has some ideas.

 

[Walter]

1. Divers are part of the solution, not part of the problem. I encourage divers to contribute to a solution. I encourage everyone to so contribute, divers are not enough.

2. A voluntary contribution which is presented as mandatory is a lie. It is immoral regardless of the amount collected and regardless of the cause to which it is given. The end justifies the means? I think not.

3. "There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." - Professor Bernardo de la Paz

4. "There is another thread with a diver absolutely incensed over the $10 per year contribution to reef preservation which they just implemented in the Keys." I have not read anything where anyone was incensed (absolutely or otherwise) over a "contribution" to reef preservation. I have read where several people oppose immoral methods of raising money for any cause. I plan to dive the Spiegel Grove soon. If asked for a donation, I'll gladly pay. If told I must pay, I will not.

 

[kwesler]

so I defer to the majority...that is what democracy is about, isn't it?

Ken

 

[jbd]

the money part of this thread. It does seem to be established fact that the coral reefs are taking a pretty severe beating from human activity as well as Mother Nature.

What can be reasonably done to offset the decline of the reefs?

Many of the contributing problems have been identified in this thread but I have to agree that I don't see that some of them will be changed especially those that involve food and fiber production and developement of the land in the coastal areas.

I have heard of projects that are trying to grow and transplant coral into damaged areas. Has anyone been involved with this or heard if this has been successful?

 

[Genesis]

requires EXTREMELY specific water balance in order to survive.

Nitrate levels that are insignificant to most life will kill coral deader than a doornail.

The biggest problem is nitrate and phosphate levels in the water. It cannot be solved easily or politically. The Keys have made a big deal about their "wastewater treatment", which is all well and good, except that when these systems overload (and they DO when storms come through) the solution is simply to dump the effluent directly into the water, which is thousands of times more harmful than trickling it in all the time.

There is no solution to the overload problem, because you can't make an infinite sink. The Keys "solution" is to inject the "treated sewage" back into the aquifer, which has unknown consequences for the aquifer and your and my drinking water supply.

That is not a solution any more than leaving power plants on that are not needed is a solution so that manatees have ARTIFICIAL sources of POLLUTION (thermal this time) to languish around in during the winter (instead of being forced by the temperature change to migrate as they did for millions of years)

The only solution is to stop nitrate and phosphate discharges into the groundwater and into our oceans. It is simply not going to happen. The coral issue is miniscule compared to that of the Mississippi and other parts of this country, where the damage is severe, spreading, and there is no realistic way to stop it.

What 'ya gonna do? Ban ALL nitrate and phosphate additions to the ground south of a line from Palm Beach to Naples? Oh? No more green grass, sugar production, etc eh? Good luck.

Yet that is precisely the kind of thing that is necessary if we're going to make any headway.

A "tax" on scuba divers is the most insane, idiotic and misfocused idea that I've heard in response to this problem. It targets a group of people who are more sensitive to that particular part of the environment than literally ANY other segment of society, then singles out the good guys for finanical sanction - effectively a fine for being and doing good!

That is flatly outrageous, just as is the alleged "mandatory contribution" to the Spiegel Grove "artificial reef" fund.

 

[narkosis]

JBD,

I just joined the forum tonite, and thought I'd chip in as regards to your question on coral transplants.

Over here in West Malaysia, there's a glaring difference in coral diversity and general water quality between our east and west coasts. Our west coast is basically the Straits of Malacca which is a major shipping lane for liners travelling to Singapore enroute to some other Asian country or vice versa. As such, most of the reefs are mostly dead or barren with very little chance of rejuvenation or even survival. Even fish variety has suffered to a large extent since the 70s.

Our east coast however faces the South China Sea, which even though is also used for shipping, is totally exposed and shipping runoff does not concentrate off our coasts at all. This is where we get pristine reefs and fish life.

On the topic of transplants, what a group of friends and I would do in the past was to keep reef tanks at home and propagate corals that could be propagated. Sure, the original source of the mother coral would have been from the sea. But just one of us bought one specimen and propagated it like crazy, for the reef aquaria industry, meaning hobbyists would buy propagated fragments from us rather than entire colonies from the shops.

In the article above, trade in corals is listed as #7 among the 11 or so reason, and we were aware of something like that. As a result, we used to make occasional trips to the West coast, to transplant some of our specimens back into the ex-reefs. On subsequent visits back to the same spot, we'd find surprising recovery and were motivated. But we couldn't proceed much further than that because of insufficient resources (human, time and $$$).

Species propagted - various Acropora, Montipora, Poccillopora, Seriatopora (Staghorns and Elkhorns), leathers and fingers like Sarcophyton, Sinularia, Cladiella, Lobophytum and Lemnalia. Also those so-called soft mushroom corals under the Discosoma genus.

So, it is entirely possible, but it could be a very large and expensive project, but given the chance, I would go back into it without hesitation.

Rgds,

Roger