We did this?

[Cacia]

It is hard to believe the photos that are all over many old diving books. I can remember my dad whacking black coral with a hack saw blade.....guess buying cute little sandles decorated with shells falls in the same category.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

Yikes!!

 

[dlndavid]

Not me, but we are still learning to be better to our world all the time.

 

[H2Andy]

is that guy in the middle picture doing a belly crawl? i thought divers did this
at times, depending on circumstance?

no need for it where i dive, so unfamiliar with it

 

[archman]

And to think that massive groves of black corals once dotted the intermediate reefs throughout the Caribbean.

Nowadays the only live species I can show my students is Cirrhopathes leutkeni. What a let down.

 

[DivePartner1]

In his first application of scuba to archeology, Jacques Cousteau used dynamite to "soften up" artifact sites off the coast of Nice.

That seems harsh with current technology, of course, but it probably beat the alternative at the time -- which proabably would have been a clam shell steam shovel.

 

[jepuskar]

Looks like what I see on a typical trip to Cozumel.

 

[miketsp]

35 years ago I would think nothing of laying explosives across a reef system to open up a channel to lay shore ends of submarine telephone cables.
Nowadays I shudder at the thought.
Amazing how attitudes change.

 

[archman]

Looks like what I see on a typical trip to Cozumel.

I believe you're confusing gorgonians with antipatharians. Large antipatharians are virtually nonexistent off Cozumel, unless you dive deeper than 200 feet. The black coral trade off the Yucatan Peninsula was one of the worst known, until it overfished itself out of existence. Yeehaw.