Update me on the state of scuba diving

[mulratt]

Seven years ago, after my first dive in Sipadan, I was ecstatic and told my DM how great it was. I was able to swim through a vast school of small fish and then saw hundreds of barracudas. She couldn't help but sadden the mood though: "If you could only see what it was like five years ago".

I have not been diving since 2013: I have been trying to diversify my travels, see different landscapes than warm tropics. But I did see "Chasing Coral" this year and it made me worry more than ever that scuba diving could deteriorate fast. So to you scuba lovers out there, are you seeing aquatic life disappear too fast to your liking? Should I dive as much as I can before it can get worse?

I read that a few places in the world are getting better, namely Indonesia.

Thanks

 

[CuzzA]

“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”

― Edgar Allan Poe

In this months cover story of DAN's AlertDiver magazine they published this article which may interest you.

Alert Diver | Remote and Rewarding

It should come as no surprise that hyperbole is common parlance on the World Wide Web, and the death of the GBR was widely believed to be true.

The far northern coral reefs are both diverse and pristine, with lettuce corals and gorgonian complementing the prolific branching corals.

I was pretty certain we would not spend our 2017 Australia dive adventure documenting a deceased and "past-tense" ecosystem, but I will admit to some uncertainty about what we might see. We intended to travel north toward the equator, where warm water could be even more of a concern than it might be at the southern tip of the reef, 1,400 miles away. We were to be one of the first groups to visit after the waters had seasonally cooled and the corals, we hoped, had a chance to bounce back.

I can't speak about the entire 133,000 square miles of the GBR, nor can I attach scientific weight to what we saw, but we observed and documented extraordinarily healthy coral reefs. If there had been bleaching at the sites we visited, the rejuvenation was inspirational. And we were certainly not the only visitors in the fall of 2017 to have that observational experience of the reef.​

While some reefs around the world may have had a rough time, others, are just fine. In my area of the Gulf coast of Florida everything is status quo and appears healthy. South Florida got wacked with Hurricane Irma and will likely be healing for a few years.

All that said, to answer your question, should you go diving? Yes, the answer is always yes, go diving.

 

[drbill]

Having the perspective of a marine biologist with nearly 50 years diving in the same waters, I have observed a number of sad changes due to impacts such as over harvesting (lobster and abalone for example), climate change and related disease (abalone) and invasive species (Sargassum horneri). Sharks which were very common back in the 60s are now rarely seen. The kelp forests of my home (Catalina Island off Los Angeles) have been seriously impacted over my lifetime.

But there have also been positive changes, usually in response to previous impacts that were curtailed by new laws. Giant sea bass are once again fairly common in our waters. Sea lion populations have increased following overhunting of them for oil in ages past. Some species of shark such as the great white and soupfin (tope) are making apparent comebacks.

However, the overall direction has been downhill and I fear increasing ocean temperatures will ultimately lead to a decline in our iconic giant kelp forests later in this century.

 

[mulratt]

Cuzza, I liked the cautious yet optimistic tone in the article:

Wandering these beaches, killing time while waiting for the flight back to Cairns, I pondered the resilience of the ocean. I believe the scientists who sounded the alarm about climate change and the hazard of coral bleaching in too warm seas. But I was inspired to see an ecosystem so completely recovered that the corals and anemone were not only astonishingly intact but also spawning. It is all about water quality. Given a chance, Mother Ocean will provide the habitat for fish and coral to flourish. To my great delight, rumors of the untimely death of the Great Barrier Reef were greatly exaggerated.

 

[TMHeimer]

Although it's a narrow local example, I have dived Atlantic Nova Scotia since 2005. In those 13 years it has been the same. Other than the usual rocks, sand, silt, seaweed and kelp, there are lobsters, crabs, Deep Sea Scallops and flounders come warm water weather. Not much else as far as fish goes. In fact, I gave up salt water fishing years ago here, especially after starting to dive and seeing only flounders. Too much commercial fishing for many decades, they say.

 

[icechip]

Had not seen many for a while but now noticing more sea stars coming back to the Maine waters I dive.

 

[boulderjohn]

I saw the pretty much what you saw in Chasing Coral first hand a couple of years ago when I visited the Great Barrier Reef for the first time in about 15 years. The difference was horrifying. I was on a liveaboard, and the man in charge of dive operations said he did not think the reef would be worth diving in 20 years.

I dived off Andros Island in the Bahamas a few years ago, swimming over acres of dead white coral with an occasional lionfish to break the monotony.

I am currently in South Florida right now, where I learned they are completing 3 years of bleaching. It looks like it. In the news one day, I saw that a local legislator is trying to get some bill passed that would somehow get funds for them to do something about it, but I have no idea what they would do with those funds.

I went to Bali to dive last year. On many of those dives, we entered the water by jumping into a mass of floating garbage. It was like diving in a landfill. As you descended to the reef, you passed by plastic bags slowly descending.

 

[mulratt]

I saw the pretty much what you saw in Chasing Coral first hand a couple of years ago when I visited the Great Barrier Reef for the first time in about 15 years. The difference was horrifying. I was on a liveaboard, and the man in charge of dive operations said he did not think the reef would be worth diving in 20 years.

Yeah, it's alarming to me because I'm holding the Great Barrier Reef up as the epitome of diving, and so hearing that it might no longer be as good when I get there makes me think I should drop everything and see it ASAP.

 

[boulderjohn]

Yeah, it's alarming to me because I'm holding the Great Barrier Reef up as the epitome of diving, and so hearing that it might no longer be as good when I get there makes me think I should drop everything and see it ASAP.

The GBR might have once been the epitome of diving, but there are far healthier reefs elsewhere now. It is also pretty darn big, so you will never see the whole thing.

 

[Dogbowl]

Indonesia seems to be the epitome of diving nowadays. GBR is not often mentioned on Scubaboard.