I thought I'd share this too, as it goes a little deeper into some of the issues. This was a response to a response to my post and the topic and I've quoted the author where indicated:
I certainly welcome this preservation effort at Farnsworth Bank. The
pinnacle is really showing the damage caused by anchors and chain line.
Yes, but that's sort of a red herring.
Don't lose sight of the fact that Farnsworth is a fairly large dive site. Most of it is inaccessible due to depth. Preservation issues need to focus on sites, not specific portions of overall sites. (Doesn't mean you can't just that they usually don't.) If you took the whole of Farnsworth and asked what percentage of the overall area has anchor damage, my guess is the percentage would be so small as to make it statistically insignificant.
On areas that are very accessible, I'd contend, the anchor damage is still relatively confined. When I go to the Yellow Wall, many time I swim over the top of the pinnacle, come down the "front" (reef right), and then proceed in a clockwise fashion. Pretty much as soon as I clear the pinnacle area (where there's no question there's anchor damage), everything's fairly healthy. On the vertical walls, I'd contend the divers kicks do more damage than anchors. Shall we make it a no-fin zone???
Every boat that stops here must set an anchor.
Not necessarily true. Every DIVE boat needs to. Fishing boats don't need to. And there's a question to answer as to who does more damage, a professional boat captain with a heavy anchors who know how to make it hook, or a recreational boater with a light anchor and no chain that mat not hold &/or may drag all over the reef?
What if the proposal were to only allow boats that need to be stationary (which means dive boats) to anchor and restrict that to commercial dive boats? That eliminates the anchors of fishing boats (who don't need to anchor) and small private dive boats (who may not be very good at anchoring). Not a perfect solution but wouldn't everyone agree this would be a good step? Ad it's one that doesn't have a financial penalty on an already-hurting dive boat industry. (And don't lose sight of the fact that when discussing MLPA issues, negative economic impact is a viable reason not to take action that might make environmental sense.)
This rare purple hydrocoral has no chance of regenerating so long as we're dropping anchors to dive here.
In that specific, limited spot, yes. On the reef as a whole, no.
Every time I've been out to Farnsworth Bank for the last dozen years I've
asked the skipper why we don't have a permanent mooring and descent line. That eliminates the need to drop an anchor and drag chain across the pinnacle.
The practical problems are:
1. Mooring balls big enough to hold large dive boats, especially in wind & swell, would have to be secured in fairly deep water with a large ball and chain and would be far enough away from the pinnacle to require a blue-water drop.
2. How many balls will you install? Two, three, four, five? How many boats will you allow on Farnsworth at a time?
3. How will you police this? Suppose there's a 'commercial" ball and a "private" ball, but a commercial boat pulls up and there's a private boat tied up to the commercial ball. What now?
4. What kind of time limit do you propose to allow for maximum use of minimum balls? Can a boat sit on the ball all day? Overnight?
5. I don't believe the state is going to accept liability here. So who's going to deal with this?
6. And then there are the maintenance questions, which go hand-in-hand with liability.
But today, with the prevalence of GPS devices there is nothing to prevent any boat from anchoring on the pinnacle.
Yes and no. GPS gets you close, but it doesn't put you right "on" the pinnacle. (Think how many times you've been on a dive boat that's circled for a while trying to get right on the high spot.) Would a mooring ball encourage people who might not be too eager to try their luck right now? I don't know. But if they did try (and the assumption is that less-skilled boaters bring less-skilled divers, not to mention the absence of a DM, site briefings and caution, rescue capabilities, etc.), it would certainly be easier to find with a mooring than without.
If the pinnacle had a no-tie-off buoy and descent line then it would become
a drift dive that's easier to approach than an oil rig. The dive boat can make an approach from up-current or upwind, whichever is prevailing and drift by the buoy. A drift approach would allow divers to drop in at the buoy or return to the swim step.
Think "Drifting Dan." You're right that we (all) dive the Oil Rigs as a drift dive. And guess what? Divers (not just Dan) miss THE WHOLE OIL RIG on a regular enough basis that it's something we're always concerned about. And you think they're going to routinely drift into a ball and chain? I don't share that optimism.
Divers would still have to navigate underwater back to the ascent line to make a safe ascent, just as they do on an anchor line.
Yes, but now the boat's either drifting around waiting for them to come up (additional surface hazard) or is tied up to a mooring ball that can't be too close to the pinnacle because of required size/depth which means that someone surfacing downcurrent may now be NOWHERE near the boat. And there are other considerations. This isn't a simple problem and it doesn't have a simple solution. Any answer comes with it's own set of issues.
If this zone is adopted as a marine reserve with a no-anchor zone then the
purple hydrocoral might just come back on this pinnacle
The purple coral is there and is there in abundance on Farnsworth. The pinnacle (or high spot as most captains refer to it) is NOT indicative of the health of the entire area, nor even just the entire diveable area.
If a buoy is installed everyone will have a much better dive site. And who knows, maybe someday we'll have buoys and ascent lines on some of the many other dive-worthy pinnacles that dot the bottom at Farnsworth Bank.
The ironic thing here is that a no-anchor zone might take Farnsworth off the destinations of the commercial dive boats for the reasons I've mentioned. And if creating it as a no-anchor zone effectively makes it a no-access zone because it creates too many unsolvable problems for commercial dive boats (who I would assume take the largest percentage of divers to the spot), what does that accomplish? Are WE willing to give up diving at Farnsworth all togethet to preserve it?
I surely hope more divers will embrace the idea of a no-anchor, no-fishing
zone on Farnsworth Bank
Two different ideas. One does not go hand-in-hand with the other. I personally would immediately support a no-take zone at Farnsworth.
The whole area is worth preserving.
Also worth seeing. There's a wonderful thing called The Law of Unintended Consequences, when you do one thing and it creates issues totally unanticipated. Let's make sure that in our desire to do good things for Farnsworth, we don't make it a treasure that's effectively locked away, never to be seen again.
- Ken
