Introduction
Main – Positives
- Conservation
- volunteers carrying out surveys
- recreational divers trained to report sightings
- REEF - 'seeks to conserve marine ecosystems by educating, enlisting and enabling divers and other marine enthusiasts to become active ocean stewards and citizen scientists''They found that fish surveys conducted using the REEF roving diver method meet several objectives:
- Ability to collect large quantities of presence/absence and relative abundance data- Indication of species distribution throughout a geographical area based on sighting frequency and abundance- Specific species presence/absence and abundance lists may be presented for any given region, subregion, zone or site- Measures of similarity in species composition may be computed between any combination of geographical areas'
-
New
species discovery
-
Tourism
and Recreational diving – entrance fees and donations finance
conservation
- Clean-ups after coastal management failures
- Educating the public about environmental issues
http://scuba.about.com/b/2011/02/08/is-diving-bad-for-the-environment.htm
– 'diving has the potential to increase public knowledge and
awareness of the plight of the underwater environment', 'increase
public awareness by using their dives to gather data about the
destruction of the coral reefs'
Main – Negatives
- Divers damaging reefs (after conservation section –
direct contrast)
- Overcrowding and effect on environment (after tourism
- consequences)
- Divers' use of the shot-line
attaching onto reef or wreck, weights used to hold it
down may damage habitat
balanced arguments:
http://scuba.about.com/b/2011/02/08/is-diving-bad-for-the-environment.htm
– pollutants leaking from dive boats, damaging coral (ignorance),
anchors damaging coral
'participating in
fish counting and coral monitoring programs'
'Environmental
organizations need this data to publish findings about the decline of
coral ecosystems, but they have limited funds and cannot travel or
put enough divers in the water to monitor all the reefs around the
world. However, recreational divers go everywhere'
'Once a person
understands what is below the ocean's surface, he is much more likely
to try to protect it'
some dive sites in
Thailand “are heavily visited by...divers, who do have an impact on
the underwater world”
“some dive sites
at Similans will be closed to all visitors. This will probably be
just one site, East of Eden, where divers are still going at the
moment”
“there will be
compulsory education for snorkel guides so they can educate the
tourists better. Also this is good IMO, but the effectual result will
be minimal”
“Reefs in India,
Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines,
Australia and even Hawaii and the Caribbean were affected by
unusually high sea surface temperatures over the spring and summer of
2010. This is the principal factor that causes coral to bleach. It
may be that overfishing, over-use by snorkelers and divers,
pollution/runoff also contribute to the weakening of the coral so
that when the water gets overheated, they cannot withstand the
stress.”
'This study
demonstrates that this density of recreational divers may be
responsible for 589,000 +/- 117,000 coral contacts and approximately
400 coral breakages annually. This level of impact could clearly have
a long term effect on coral health at the site'
Potential Solutions:
http://scuba.about.com/b/2011/02/08/is-diving-bad-for-the-environment.htm
- 'encourage ecologically friendly diver behaviour', help divers with
buoyancy problems, pick dive sites carefully (depending on skills of
divers), 'mentoring and peer pressure'
Conclusion
- with adequate training and more education, the risk of
divers damaging coral can be significantly reduced
- more +ves than -ves
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