Dying Oceans

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I was almost with you until you started the nonsense about sunscreen.

Probably, divers wearing sunscreen are not one of the bigger threats to ocean health. On the other hand, what is the amount of sunscreen you feel comfortable adding to the water that is lived on by somebody you care about?
 
I predict a major shortage of tin caused by increased hat production.

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This is, IMHO, a simplistic, romantic notion. The reality is that the Earth will become essentially uninhabitable before the population is pared down enough. Must we wait for "starvation, sickness, and natural disasters" before we take meaningful action?
Well they could just let spanish flu back out into the populace and give it a year or two everyone talks about how many people died in both world wars and Spanish flu in 16 months topped both and that was without effective air transportation. 1.5 billion people around back then 500 million infected 10-20% died thus a pretty effective population reduction now increase the pop by a nice round number of 5 times(make it easy math). There goes 250-500 million factor in that most of the ones that die are young adults who are entering the breeding population and in most well developed nations that are relying on immigration to keep their populations stable/growing very slowly and well it would put on heck of a dent in our growth pattern atleast for a generation maybe two.

/sarcasim
 
Let nature take it's course. Starvation, sickness, natural disasters are nature's ways of dealing with over population. Yet every time nature takes action we step in and save lives. We want it both ways and are paying the price.

Already taken care of in the USA thanks to the implentation of Obamacare



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Doing my part by not having children.
 
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I'm not a big seafood eater but long ago I made it a rule that I don't eat seafood I haven't caught and prepared myself! It's better all the way around.

---------- Post added October 30th, 2013 at 03:48 AM ----------


Caesar's last breath. Someday we'll all have some little rads from Japan.
 
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OMG... The Oceans are dying!!!!

And this is somehow news to some of our SB members?

[rant]

The most of us practice institutionalized self-denial every time we post in the travel forums. Glowing reports are often a product of having only "been there" once or maybe only in the last five years, but anyone who has been diving (and observant) for more than ten years has seen a downward slide.

It is slow and insidious, hard for most visiting SCUBA divers to see. We come and go, we vacation, we go in and out of the sport with some rapidity. The old dogs (who can still remember), we know how fast things have slid into the toilet, literally and figuratively.

I started recreational diving in the Caribbean in 1970 with a trip to Cayman. I returned in 75, 82 and 92 (give or take). There is no reason for me to return for anything underwater [at this point loud cries of derision arise on :sblogo: from local merchants and frequent visitors, god love StingRay City, the perfect amusement ride in an otherwise desolate moonscape... at least by chronological comparison]

This denial arises over any destination at which we dive. If you dare say that you have seen this or that level/speed of degradation, you will soon be shouted down and minimalized. One of the worst spots for this was at Trip Advisor when someone asked how snorkeling was on Roatan compared to other Caribbean destinations. I wrote pure fact about reef structure and the distance from shore, and the howling ensued. Now, I was just talking about the distance from shore... wait until I get into the hyper speed of current reef degradation.

My wife had been diving Roatan for 13 years now. She started noticing something beyond her SPG, let's say, 11 years ago. She has niow since been diving all over the world, she undrestands the difference between the rest of the world and comparing it to what is theoretically available in the Caribbean, and the Paul Humann book. She is not looking for Pygmy Seahorses or even Hammerheads on her annual trip to Roatan. So take this relatively new but experienced diver and get her take on this? She ticks through a list of what she has noticed disappearing over this last decade. It is amazing what she is no longer seeing or able to find. Roatan is still some of the best there is in the Caribbean, but that isn't saying much in 2013. The speed and totality of this impact of Roatan development and popularity accomplished in 7 years what took Cayman 20 years.

I watched Cayman go to crap over a twenty year span. Roatan on the other hand, remained really nice until the tipping point was reached and I would peg that at 1999 or so. The decline in Roatan's reefs have eclipsed the speed that Cayman had reached. They are not yet as bad as Cayman, but it's really only a matter of a very few years.

Clipped from a trip report posted on Trap Advisor: "We had the bestest week ever diving at Sandals Jamaica and they have the best dive operation you can imagine!!!!!!". Hope you enjoyed your first post-cert dive trip. You don't know what you can't know.

Or, "...arriving on the cruise ship. What is the best dive op who will take us to the best dive sites and respect our experience level of training????" I was never so happy as the day that SB created a Cruise Ship Forum.

We dive on reefs, reefs circle the islands. We stay for a week on that island. All of the infrastructure needed for that one week stay remains behind. Flash: It's really not the act of diving or the number of logged dives. The reef killer is sedimentary run-off largely caused by earth moving for buildings and roads. Anything else you want to dump in the Ocean? Or have the locals dump in it for you? What do you think they do with all the garbage you leave behind... the wrappers, the dead batteries, the czyalume light sticks, the empty water and shampoo bottles. Most every island in Paradise open-burns what they can, and then barges the rest out to 3000' and dumps it... just the thing cruise ships get in big YouTube trouble with.

After our week, we dump a few pounds of kerosene residue on the reef that used to be at the airport. I go far enough back to remember when Bonaire had a superb dive off the airport. Not no more, eh?

So we can all get together and bemoan all of the divers with bad buoyancy while we still must wear gloves for a list of ten reasons, we can pay for the Canned Dolphin Show which supports research, we can enjoy a beach bbq replete with a well-tanned New Yorker masquerading in dreadlocks and a bad accent who fire dances, we can figure out (with the repetitive articles in the big dive rags)- what non-SCUBA activities can we enjoy while we are in paradise (ie: how much can I drink?).

The golden era of SCUBA is past, we will never see it return. There is nothing really to do, we have reached the tipping point. The fishing fleets come and go, they rape the reefs and move on to the next big thing... altho the next thing is progressively smaller and less productive.

Don't fret. Go diving, enjoy the reef and the fish. If you don't have twenty years of Caribbean diving, you will be none the wiser. That will be me over in the corner, saying "You should have seen it when". Easy to pass it off as the ramblings of an old man with Nitrogen lesions on his brain. But then there's my perky wife, Miss Positive, basically saying the same thing, all on her own volition. I did tell her what to start observing, what to keep check on, but she came up with the same conclusion all on her own- with only a decade of observation.

Six years ago we went to the Philippines. We were both agog and amazed at the variety and volume of critters~ and how cheap, overall, the land portion cost. Then we met the old man sitting in the corner at the dive resort's bar. You only know what you know. Apparently we missed "it" by at least five years.

Enjoy it while it lasts. Don't worry about the grandchildren... they're already dead, and we did it.


[/rant]

Must leave now, off to Raja before it becomes an arm-pit. :rofl3:
 
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And the Great Lakes are dead or on fire. Oh wait! The diving there is better than ever.

We will run out of oil by 1980. Oh wait! We're still running on oil in 2013.

We will soon be in another ice age because of air pollution. Oh wait! We're worried about global warming.

We're worried about global warming. Oh wait! There's no evidence. So I guess we'll worry about climate change...

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https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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