Help With A few Lines....

[Cacia]

I was asked to contribute some thoughts to an environmental project.

There are so many articulate creative thinkers here. Could you contribute a few ideas?


1) How do you feel when you are diving on a beautiful reef?

2) How does knowing about the life on a reef enhance your diving experience?

3) As people who enjoy the ocean and diving on reefs, why do you want to protect them?


aloha.

 

[dbulmer]

1) Like a blind man walking into the Garden of Eden and suddenly receiving the gift of sight.

2) By making me marvel at the ebb and flow of colour

3) Because we are spectators in a world we don't understand.

 

[RumBum]

2. I appreciate the u/w behaviors by recognizing the type of fish I am seeing and looking for behavior traits. For example, my non-diver friends are always amazed when I try to explain a cleaning station to them.

 

[Pyrofish]

1) Inspired, at times forgetting that I'm even diving. Then I remember I'm breathing from a tank, and I want to see as much of it as I can. What new sites await me just beyond the mist of viz.
2) I didn't think I needed to know about the life on the reef, and scoffed at paying for a book on reef life. The I went to a few very nice reefs and immediately bought not one, but three books on reef creatures. The reef goes from interesting, to enthralling once you know what you're looking at.
3) Reefs aren't just pretty for those of us that choose to venture below the waves, they're an integral part of the marine ecosystem. Without the reefs to feed and shelter fish, a massive part of the food chain would be disrupted, possibly beyond repair. Besides, if the reefs were gone, all of the reef-hoppers would be out crowding the wrecks

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

1) How do you feel when you are diving on a beautiful reef?

Awe... Perfect and total awe. Reverence. A feeling that's almost... like some great spiritual experience, or something... Like Satori.

2) How does knowing about the life on a reef enhance your diving experience?

It makes me more fully understand the incredible order behind the apparent chaos, and how all of life, below and above the ocean, is connected and works in symbiosis.

3) As people who enjoy the ocean and diving on reefs, why do you want to protect them?

We are driven to protect the things, people, and creatures that we love. When the reefs are gone, having been overfished, bleached, polluted out of existence, and dead, it will be a catastrophe on a scale that I don't think anyone can totally comprehend. I don't get out and protest or get in anyone's face over it. I quietly do my part and hope that others are doing theirs, and that in the end, it will be enough to preserve the reefs and ocean life so that others of future generations can see and enjoy the things I have, and experience the same feelings I've felt.

 

[Cacia]

Great, folks. Thanks! I was having writer's block. I want to say something about the dive community being stewards for the underwater ecosystem....
I knew ya'll would help!

 

[Mr.X]

Hi Catherine...thought I'd give it a shot:

1) How do you feel when you are diving on a beautiful reef? Being invited to world where self disappears and is embraced with color, shapes, movement and warm kindness

2) How does knowing about the life on a reef enhance your diving experience? If you are invited to a home where you are treated with care and love it behooves you to get to know your patrons.

3) As people who enjoy the ocean and diving on reefs, why do you want to protect them? Protection and love is bestowed to those we cherish the most. Mother Ocean is our primordial parent.

 

[ScubaTexan]

1) How do you feel when you are diving on a beautiful reef?

A sense of exhiliration, amazement and awe. Also, a sense of honor in getting the opportunity to witness up close and firsthand what most others only get to dream about or see in books and magazines.

2) How does knowing about the life on a reef enhance your diving experience?

It makes me appreciate it more, for its sheer beauty and the knowledge that it's a living being, just like all the fish in the sea and me.

3) As people who enjoy the ocean and diving on reefs, why do you want to protect them?

So that I can enjoy them again and others can, as well. One of the great things about completing a Coral Reef Conservation course is that you come away with an understanding of how long it takes for a reef to form, as well as how long it takes to repair it when it is damaged. A living coral reef is like no other being anywhere in the universe.

Hope that helps!

 

[Rick Inman]

#1) Like an astronaut, and adventurer on an alien world... weightless, on self contained life-support, surrounded by creatures strangers than I could imagion... amazed that I am really right here on Earth.

 

[dbulmer]

Cannot resist ... resistance is futile so ... what planet are you on Rick?