Will Shops & Instructors like this, or hate this?

[diveprof]

My primary gripe against this idea would be the negative impact that this would have on the Blue Heron Bridge environment. This is a special dive site with marine life in even less than 1' of water. Just standing waist deep on the sand impacts habitat/marine life. Now imagine many large classes of visiting dive shop students trying to master these skills in this environment - to include the standing, kneeling and the "oops" associated with learning new skills. Imagine the negative impact on photographers trying to capture this special place with lots of students in the water. Do you really want to be known as the person responsible for encouraging this impact?

 

[danvolker]

My primary gripe against this idea would be the negative impact that this would have on the Blue Heron Bridge environment. This is a special dive site with marine life in even less than 1' of water. Just standing waist deep on the sand impacts habitat/marine life. Now imagine many large classes of visiting dive shop students trying to master these skills in this environment - to include the standing, kneeling and the "oops" associated with learning new skills. Imagine the negative impact on photographers trying to capture this special place with lots of students in the water. Do you really want to be known as the person responsible for encouraging this impact?

This is an excellent point, and fortunately, I have this covered pretty well.
The area I would suggest to put this is the same area the Ultimate Diver Challenge wants to use in late July...which is already aproved by the ERM.
This is the area north of the west bridges....North of the bait cleaning station many of use to rinse our gear with.
It would be out to the west in around 10 feet of water. We have had some very good eyes looking for nudibranchs out here, and there do not seem to be any concentrations of anything comprable at all to what we have in nudi-world and the other areas under and near the bridges, in the areas customarily enjoyed by photographers.

Another plus is that since on incoming tides, this area is well past the customary diving area, any silting by students will only effect the mangoves further north
There is a very good chance, that the County will even put in a stairway near the bait cleaning station for us to have access there with, along with much better rinsing station and another shower or two. This has to do with talks in progress, over what the County would do for the UDC TV Show. No decisions get made, without Carmen Vare of ERM weighing in on this for the environmental impact.

If we had this Diamond Reef like tunnel system set up soon, we could have more reason for the open water classes to begin out north of where we all dive..and no longer silting in our area....of course, half the photographers silt pretty badly themselves, so the idea of the tunnel will be good for much more than just new students.
What do you think?

 

[boulderjohn]

I watched a video of the original Diamond reef system....I could not tell how they anchored it for certain , but it appears as though it is connected to the surface...this would move too much for us, so we would need anchor points on poles driven in to the bottom or equivalent...Probably a request we would have to put through Environmental Resorce Management of Palm Beach County...which we can do

We who are ocean-deprived and are required to work on stable yet removable platforms in poor visibility reservoirs have no trouble with this sort of thing.

Whatever you want will stay at whatever depth you want. You suspend it from a float on the surface. You attach it to the bottom using a ground screw that you screw in when you start and screw out when you finish. There are any of several ways to make both the top and bottom rope lengths adjustable, as you would a tent.

 

[diveprof]

The may address some of the concerns. Particularly if the area you describe also becomes the spot for training OW students. I still wonder if adding structure (Diamond Reef tunnel system) may draw marine life from the current spots. As a one time thing for the Ultimate Diver Challenge using this spot may not have that much impact (I've not dove in that area so I can't speak to that). As a frequent use spot with large classes, don't know how that will play out. Personally, I wish they would make the whole area a marine park and stop collectors and even fishing (know that's not likely).

 

[boulderjohn]

In case I did not make it clear, a diamond reef system set up the way I described can be set up new each time it is used and then removed after each time it is used. That makes it extremely flexible in terms of setup. In the local dive spots around here, we are required to set up and remove more challenging setups than that every time we instruct.

 

[danvolker]

The may address some of the concerns. Particularly if the area you describe also becomes the spot for training OW students. I still wonder if adding structure (Diamond Reef tunnel system) may draw marine life from the current spots. As a one time thing for the Ultimate Diver Challenge using this spot may not have that much impact (I've not dove in that area so I can't speak to that). As a frequent use spot with large classes, don't know how that will play out. Personally, I wish they would make the whole area a marine park and stop collectors and even fishing (know that's not likely).

MANY of the Dive Operators and shops are already discussing how much better it would be to move the OW student classes to a place where the silting will be of no consequence to the photographers ( that traveled from far away to get here)...and how much better it would be to have the students far away from the nudibranch and octopus areas ( and etc) when they are pogo-ing up and down onto the bottom. This north of the bridge area could be great for this, especially if they can walk right in here.

The bell has already rung for the classes...there is no stopping that now...but we can move them to a place where they will not interfere with the main parts of the park. Maybe when they can do the Diamond tunnel system or equivalent. without silting, the instructor can tell them they are ready to move to the main part of the park

 

[diveprof]

BoulderJohn the system as you describe would be preferable as it would be removed after each training would not create habitat for some of the critters we love to photograph and would not draw critters from other locations.

 

[Thalassamania]

They were made by a company called "Diamond Reef" and came with a whole system, including a passport kinda book and pretty glue in stamps. Don't know if they're still in business, I stole that photo and write up from a shop website I found google: "Diamond Reef."

 

[danvolker]

They were made by a company called "Diamond Reef" and came with a whole system, including a passport kinda book and pretty glue in stamps. Don't know if they're still in business, I stole that photo and write up from a shop website I found google: "Diamond Reef."

I did. I found a good video on it....I am pretty sure we could make something like this ourselves....Thanks for the idea Thal!

 

[Thalassamania]

Each square is held in place by a small dive weight on the bottom.