What Do You Do to Help the Environment While Diving?

[Compressor]

Please avoid bringing any plastics to the oceans. And now I see many outlets selling stainless steel straws.

Watch your trim and stay above coral reefs. If you see someone damaging them, let them know gently as they may not know.

Thank you for helping the oceans.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

So, please tell us what you do to help the environment.

Teach people to dive responsibly in an interdependent aqueous medium.

 

[CT-Rich]

Not a damn thing other than refusing to get on airplanes to go dive faraway places and diving locally (regionally) instead.

I actually avoided dive travel by saying the carbon foot print was reason enough to stay-cation diving. Mostly it was I never had the money.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Never had the money or time to fly for dive travel so I can’t be blamed for taking part in thousands of lbs of jet fuel being burned to transport my entitled ass halfway accross the world to blow bubbles.
I stay home and dive my coast and learned to love it. Recently, (within the last three years), we’ve had a mass infestation of purple urchins which have been devastating to kelp forests. So Fish and Game has done research alongside the Bodega Marine Lab which is affiliated with UC Berkeley, and they have determined that it is beneficial to remove as many purple urchins (or smash) as possible. The limit has been changed from 35 urchins to 20 gallons af crushed urchins, so the limit has been drastically increased. Many dive clubs and organizations are holding organized urchin removal dives which I attend.
Our aim is to remove urchins completely from certain geographical areas to give the kelp a fighting chance to take hold and grow. Hopefully through our actions the kelp will come back and the abalone will be able to survive.
So that’s what I’m doing.
As a matter of fact, I was actually planning a dive vacation around something similar when I heard about the lionfish problem. Instead of going to some lavish dive vacation spot, I was going to go somewhere where the lionfish were thick and get to work! I was going to make it a workation.

Maybe some of you should consider doing the same thing and get your butts to Norcal and help us out with our purple urchin problem. If you’re going to burn jet fuel to cart your little pampered entitled asses around at least make it count and do something usefull.
The bonus is that we have really good wine around here and it’s a beautiful spot to hang out.

 

[doctormike]

This thread raises an interesting ethical question.

I did suggest local diving to limit one's carbon footprint, and several other people have picked up on that theme. However on reflection I wonder if that was a fair thing for me to say.

I am lucky to live right on the edge of a vibrant marine ecosystem with hundreds of incredible historic shipwrecks within diving range. But there are many accomplished divers who might not have that advantage. Is it fair to imply that their choice to be scuba divers instead of gardeners or glassblowers is ecologically selfish?

I personally don't think that it is. If you start down that road, you really can't do anything but sit in the dark. So many of our choices have huge environmental impacts, and it's unrealistic to expect us each to bear that full burden as an overriding consideration. There are choices that we make every day without measuring that impact. If you buy a house that's 10 minutes further from your work by car, pretty soon the implications of that choice add up.

To take one obvious example, I don't feel guilty about having children, so who am I to criticize a childless diver who flies to the Caribbean once a year? On balance, and taken completely without other considerations or context, I'm a much bigger drag on the environment.

Sorry for the thread hijack. I still won't drink bottled water.

 

[flyboy08]

I have solar on my house, avoid single use bottles, keep my thermostat at 56F when I am not home, try to consolidate my driving trips. All of that is important for the environment. Burning $20 worth of gas so I can putter around the sea floor for a couple of hours is not eco friendly. I will open derelict lobster pots and recover lines and pieces of litter, but it is much more about how you live everyday than what you do while diving. Although killing lion fish is a pretty good one.

The best things you can do to improve water quality are at home, like don’t fertilize your lawn, compost food waste. Make sure your car doesn’t leak oil. Recycle papers and plastics. Don’t ever buy bottled water.

Every gallon of gasoline creates 22 lbs of CO2. Average household electricity produces 5-10 tons of CO2 a year. Cut back on meat consumption, methane from cattle is 20 times better at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Changing over to all LED bulbs will do a lot more than picking up junk while diving. The neat thing is, you can do both....

keep my thermostat at 56F when I am not home........holy cow! Do you wear a dry suite in the house upon your return!?

 

[bowlofpetunias]

I'm not going to repeat other good points that have been raised.

I do leave cans and bottles underwater if there is a chance something may be using them for homes. Yes there are other non man made items but in some of our sites not many of them. I would also hate to have a creature dart back to it's bottle to escape a predator only to find it gone!

Something I do that hasn't been mentioned is try to educate others. Many of the sites we dive are popular with families and tourists. When we are heading back to our vehicle we are often asked.. "What did you see down there? or Is there anything down there?" I take every opportunity to bring out my digital camera and SHOW them what we see down there. I will then talk how what we do on shore threatens the marine creatures.

It is easier for people to "buy into" the message when they have just seen pictures of creatures they ooohed and aaahhed over!

 

[lowviz]

First, de-weaponize my Gatorade holder. See pic.

U/W, keep your line cutter skills up to par on fishing line. Below that mess, you will often find an amazing amount of lead. My local Delaware wreck's drive shaft is a great snag and the depression below it is a good place to find lead.

Think globally, act locally...

 

[J-Vo]

1st dive this year at our local training area back in April. Came out of the water with 12 pounds of 2lb weights. All with plastic water bottles tied to them floating about 2' above the bottom. I assume this was some instructors "search and recovery" class for AOW from the previous year. I bet letting that lead sit in the water over the winter was really good for our drinking supply. I also recovered ~6 snorkels, a spool with line, and several fiberglass marker stakes. We are obviously doing a good job of keeping our local site clean.

Speaking of lead, has anyone else ever noticed how much dust comes off those soft shot pouches in the water? Those things should be banned.

 

[Kharon]

Re. the impact of air travel. Guess what? That plane is going to fly whether you are on it or not. I would bet divers are a very small proportion of air passengers and actually have little or no impact compared to your daily driveing among other much more impactful things you do on a daily basis.