Protecting The Reef

[Bruciebabe]

Following on from the other threads about the reef destruction in Puert Galera I have some suggestions that could be used for reef protection anywhere from Florida to the Red Sea.
Firstly assign the area as an underwater national park. All who dive there to pay an annual fee. That fee used to police the national park. Best to keep government out of this as in many places they are riddled with corruption and the money will just go to the local politicians.
All divers arriving to receive a briefing and check out dive before being allowed to buy park pass (which is attached to BCD). Any transgression of rules and the pass is confiscated. Diving without pass = big fine.
All diveguides to be certified and licensed by the national park. Diveguides who allow bad behaviour lose their license and can't work.
All underwater photographers have to pay an additional fee and have a check out dive that they can actually take photographs without damaging the reef. Minimum 100 dives experience for this one. Photo pass can be confiscated for bad behaviour and diver allowed to dive without camera.
No OW training allowed on fragile reefs. Training to be done in allocated "robust" areas. Divers only graduate to the reefs when checked out as being good enough.
All commercial dive operations must join local operators association with the objective of sustaining and even improving the local ecosystems. Any operator who persistently misbehaves gets kicked off the association and therefore cannot continue in business.

What do you think?

 

[HowardE]

While I like your premise, I just have to dissent, on the method. I do believe in the preservation of reefs. However, your main idea would require "scuba police" someone to enforce the rules. I just don't see that happening at all. There are several "underwater national parks" throughout the world. Enforcing regulations would be a virtually impossible task. There's just too much ocean to swim in to make this a practical policy.

Your idea also requires NON-Divers to care about this. In the US, this would require legislation to make it possible, which would mean spending public money for policy. I just don't see the average joe voting to spend money to preserve reefs.

Bruciebabe, It's a quite idealistic idea, and I wish that this world were consious enough for something like this to be of worldwide concern, or even important enough for local policies to be enforced.

 

[hvulin]

we have this "money will save everything" attitude in Croatia and I can only tell you that it doesn't work!

money brings profit, knowledge saves reefs... If you are after profit you are on the right path but bare in mind that you'll have a lot of local protest because of this...

btw. you think local DMs will like the additional cost of yet another license?

 

[alcina]

Please don't penalize the photographers...without starting yet another debate on the issue, while there are some photographers with bad habits out there, there are many more who have excellent habits. And there are non-camera toters who have terrible habits as well as those who have great habits.

The issue should be inclusive, not exclusionary...let's find ways to educate all divers to be respectful, courteous and responsible to the environment, other divers and the sport.

I'm not a big fan of more legislation...in many areas the laws, standards of practice and other guidelines are not enforced as it is...too much ocean, not enough resources. Too much time in a little office making up rules and not enough time/effort in making people better divers! Real world solutions must accept that dive companies have to make a profit, that there are going to be badly trained divers who may need remedial work, that there are going to be divers who believe that because they paid their money they can do whatever the heck they want to...the list goes on...

 

[markfm]

A check-out dive is a good thing. Deep Blue did that with us in Utila -- first drop was over a sand patch, to make sure our weighting was clean, we weren't bouncing around, get a feel for our "style" as it were. Entirely up front about it -- they work hard to preserve their reefs in the Honduras, same as you wish to.
National parks, at least where I live, truly imply government sanctioning/presence. Govt. legislation is a royal pain, even in nominally non-corrupt areas -- folks who don't understand about a topic trying to legislate.

Photography is another minor disagreement. I didn't have 100 dives in Utila, but I was careful to stay up/back, remain aware of my buoyancy. Another "checkout" category thing.

Overall, the dive ops in a given area control their destiny, to a greater or lesser extent. There needs to be peer pressure, honest word-of-mouth if a particular op has really bad practices.

Rather than trust national legislatures to do something, perhaps require that an Op be certified by an international organization, and then nudge the international diving orgs to be a bit more pro-active with their certified pros. I know that's a tough row to hoe, already enough slanging towards the 800 pound gorilla org, but at least they in theory have knowledge of the marine environment, and if an area has 20 Ops, with 19 complaining about the practices of 1, that might be reason for the umbrella org to poke about, warn or delist the errant Op.

 

[HowardE]

I wasn't sure where to contribute this... Here or on the other thread "removed thread"...

I've been thinking about quite a bit today(since I spent 4 hours on a plane, I had the time)

Perhaps an "open letter" to the diving certification agencies of the world (or maybe a petition), to make a commitment to better efforts towards preservation of the world's reefs.

It seems to me, and obviously to others, that legislation is not the answer, and governments are probably not getting involved.

If education regarding reef preservation started in the classroom, before the OW cert. Have students take a test about how to safely treat the reef. Bouyancy control should be stressed more, because if you have good bouyancy skills, you won't be crashing into the reef out of control.

How does that sound? (Aside from being idealistic)

Anyone?

 

[Babydamulag]

The idea that money saves reefs...well, it is kinda right...the reef destruction in our area came from the use of dynamite and cyanide fishing. This is wholesale destruction was just a byproduct of a bigger problem. The local fishermen were trying to earn enough money to feed their families using "modern" fishing techniques. Again, the byproduct was wholesale reef slaughter. The depletion of the fishing resources was affected as well. Remember, most people never see the world we do. The destruction was "Out of sight, out of mind". No one worries about a crisis until it becomes a crisis. We have approached our reef preservation in a three way manner. Education, conservation, and then money. Since we are the only divers in the area, it is our responsibility to report reef health status to the local officials. This helps with the education and conservation piece. Local government units use our data to make decisions about the area. The other is money. Local government units have established small artificial reefs. These reefs are marked and off-limits to fishing. Divers pay a small fee to dive them. It takes a lot of work to fix the wrongs but we are getting there. ALways keep 50 bar.

 

[my1ocean]

There has been a difference made in the keys. At least a little. We do have Special Preservation Area's (SPA's, part of the National Marine Sanctuary) where there have been mooring balls placed in an effort to keep boaters from anchoring. Most of the dive ops give a good briefing about staying off the reef... The SPA areas are no fishing, no touching, no take. Sure there are still people anchoring, fishing and roto tilling (love that term)in the SPAs, but I'm seeing more and more concientious divers wagging fingers at careless divers. Boat captains have turned into guardians themselves, advising other boaters of there wrongdoing or calling wildlife officers.

I guess my point is that I agree with Hvulin. Education is the key. Get enough people educated and concientious and the masses will do the rest.

How on Earth could you protect a park like you're suggesting from Joe Public diver with a boat? Furthermore, such a place would probably attract some vandal wanting to thumb their nose at such a place.

 

[hvulin]

Don't forget about the rest of the sea/ocean... I have never in my life dove on a real reef (only reefs in my part of the world are deep reefs (over 80m)) but still, I have seen a lot of nice stuff... The reefs are probably the most endangered ones but certanly not the only problematic parts of the ocean!

dive safe

 

[TSandM]

In the abstract, there are good ideas here, but in practice, there are some problems.

1) Who is going to levy, collect, and administer the park fee? Going back a step further, who is going to have the authority to designate the area as a park? This is going to get government involved, because government generally creates and administers parks. That means the fee is going to a governmental agency. It is very difficult from that point onward to ensure that the money is used as one would like it. Where we were diving last week, a diver's fee has been proposed to help protect grey nurse sharks. One of the projects proposed for the money thus raised is to capture the sharks and remove the embryos and attempt to raise them in vitro . . . I don't think this is what people who want to protect their habitat had in mind.

2) Enforcement of pass rules and diver screening/control by dive ops will require personnel and money, and again raises the question of who is going to administer such a program -- back to government again. Unless the fees from divers and dive ops could be made sufficient to pay for personnel/equipment/administrative costs/overhead, I doubt there is any governmental agency that cares enough about localized reef damage from divers to be willing to spend any other money doing this.

It wouldn't make a great deal of difference to me if my charter dives cost $5 more to help pay for meaningful and useful programs to protect/improve reefs, but it might some people, and certainly any hefty fees to dive ops, which often barely run in the black, might make the difference between survival and not -- do we want our opportunities to dive in wonderful places seriously limited because we've killed off the dive ops with unsupportable fees?

This whole issue would be moot if divers were taught good buoyancy skills and proper respect for the underwater world in the first place. Maybe that's where the effort should be focused.