The reality is that many of the divers who visit Malapascua are vacation divers that come to dive with the thresher sharks....they often have poor buoyancy control and if left to hover neutrally would be all over the place and scare the timid sharks away before they ever come out of the shadowy depths. The guides know this and frequently plant their groups on the bottom. They know that a shark sighting equals happy dive tourists and happy dive tourists equals happy customers and tips.
From my recollection diving there a 4 years ago, there is a band of rock/coral at about 20-25 meters deep. Below that in the 30-35m zone it is primarily sandy substrate....one might argue that there is nothing on the bottom in that zone to destroy while sitting/kneeling there. Do not read this as me condoning the practice, just articulating the prevailing opinion of the divers, guides, and management of the operation from when i was last there.
I always find it interesting and amusing that folks point to others actions in the water as problematic when the very nature of anyone's presence in the water is obtrusive. I have heard people lecture others about the sunscreen they are lathering up with and how that is negatively affecting the environment but have no problem getting millimeters away from a fish or other sealife to bag the chance of getting a prized photo.
Our presence in the ocean is obtrusive. From a recreational standpoint we are just exploiting the ocean and its contents to suit our desires, you can color it conservationism but the reality is that it is exploitation, but we dismiss that because it is not convenient to address that. Its not convenient to address the fact that the boat taking us to the dive site is polluting the environment, we don't care because we consider it a necessity to be able to dive the site. We can point out that stuff like certain sunscreen are not good for the environment but ignore the fact that the production of neoprene, the material that provides exposure protection and allows us to enjoy our exploitative activities is fraught with the production of chemical waste to produce a synthetic rubber suit that itself is bad for the environment, but we ignore that because it would be inconvenient not to. One can say they are diving to be a conservationist, and one might argue without diving tourism countries might not/might not have invoked environmental laws to prevent activities that are destructive to the underwater environment such as dynamite fishing....but lets be realistic, the overwhelming hordes of recreational scuba divers have a negative impact as well...we just choose to ignore it because it is convenient to do so.
So, I don't condone folks sitting on the bottom especially if the bottom is coral. but before we go poking at folks for doing what one might consider unthinkable, take the whole picture of the activity we enjoy into perspective and realize that there are three fingers pointing back at ourselves for everyone we point at others.
-Z
