There will be an incredibly SMALL impact from the oil spill on the Bahamas or the Keys, if any at all:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/5293211-post162.html
However, the economic impact caused by the media whipping this up into a frenzy will be huge. Recently, I sent this to Tom Ingram of DEMA:
Hello Tom,
The media has successfully created a mountain out of a mole hill, substituting hysteria and worst case scenarios for fact and common sense. While it may impact them positively financially, they grow richer at the expense of the Florida tourism and dive industry. In short, people are canceling vacations, dives and even classes in Florida out of fear generated by this media frenzy surrounding the Deep Horizon Oil Spill. Even our premier annual event, Invade the Keys, which drew over 150 people last year is suffering, and we are now expecting less than 50 and the cancellations are mounting. As you know, the entire dive industry has suffered a lot during this economic downturn, and unless we can reverse the public perception, many more charters and dive shops will fail as we move into the traditionally busy months here in Florida. I feel DEMA needs to take the lead here in diffusing the situation and help spread the word that the diving in Florida is GREAT. No, I don't expect or want any help with our ITK (Invade the Keys)... that was never intended to be profitable, so it won't affect ScubaBoard in the least. However, Florida's dive industry, and the Keys in particular, are taking one hell of a beating.
To that end, I have created and am displaying an animated gif in our event banner. You can see it here:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/5293211-post162.html or here:
ScubaBoard - Online Scuba Diving Community - Equipment, Dive Travel, Training and More! Should you want to use or share it, I will also attach it to this e-mail
Please let me know if I can assist you in this effort, and if DEMA is going to lead us in this. I can accept banners in the following sizes: 700X200, 468X60, 600X120 and 728X90. These can be in .jpg, .gif, animated .gif and swf formats. If the latter, the URL needs to be hard coded in the file. Perhaps we can come up with some sort of banner competition in order to highlight this effort?
Pete "NetDoc" Murray
Chairman of the ScubaBoard
717 Executive Dr, Winter Park Fl, 32789
(407) 745-1516
