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From Away.com

Diving without Impact


By Bill Belleville

Megan is 40 feet beneath me, next to the remote coral reef we have come to visit in our small boat. The water surface, textured underneath like the sky on a windswept day, is an equal distance above.

My dive buddy seems awash in a phalanx of color-striped and spotted butterfly fish and gobies, French angels and yellowtail snapper. A green moray pokes its head from its burrow; the antennae of a spiny lobster flirts with the light current; a Caribbean reef squid moves by, its motions as fluid as mercury.

As Megan's exhaled bubbles slowly rise around me, I'm as in awe of the dream-like experience of diving as I've ever been. But I have new concerns that I never had when I took my first plunge two decades ago—concerns that go far beyond how much air I have left in my tank.

I wonder about the full impacts of our underwater visit. More to the point, I worry that about the legions of other "subsurface tourists" who journey to these fragile reefs expecting the marine environment to be a Disneyesque illusion to be consumed or manipulated, rather than a rare and exotic place to be appreciated.

Historically, the sport of scuba diving has skittered precariously between reality and fantasy ever since Sea Hunt introduced the notion of swaggering underwater adventure to a mass television audience in 1958. The aqualung, invented a mere 15 years earlier for research, had entered the realm of make-believe.

Today, some four million people in the U.S. are active certified scuba divers, along with 10 million skin divers who "free dive" with just fins, a mask, and a snorkel. The underwater world has never been more accessible.

Going Deep Responsibly
But with this new accessibility comes a new responsibility. Coral reefs simply may not be able to stand all the attention. Burgeoning populations in developing countries—where warm-water reefs thrive—are now stressing reefs with:
  • overfishing
  • harvesting of coral for sale as curios
  • upland activities like logging, farming, and mining

When local beaches are retrofitted with traditional resorts, dredging, sedimentation, nutrient loading, and the loss of coastal wetlands crank the stress factor up a few more degrees. Factor in the grounding of freighters and sport boats, entanglement of fishnets and anchor damage, and underwater marine debris, and conditions soon become critical.

Adding sport divers to this mix is tricky business. Increasingly, it requires mature decision-making on the part of the individual diver—not just to behave more carefully underwater, but to take a long-range look at how his or her presence is affecting the coral reef habitat, the wildlife there, and the related culture back on land. Discretion in choosing destination, local lodging, and individual dive operators for eco-sensitivity is more vital than ever.

In a landmark study, Helen Talge, a doctorate candidate at the University of South Florida, observed 206 divers in the sanctuaries of the Florida Keys during the summer of 1989. She found:
  • Some 60 percent of the divers had six "interactions" per dive with the coral by holding or accidentally finning it. That is, the study group touched the coral 1,206 times during a single tank dive.
  • "Most actions were due to poor buoyancy control and wearing of excessive weight," Talge said.
  • Coral touching was also more common among men than women, and by those who wore protective gloves.

As a result, even when activities like spearfishing are banned—as it now is in many dive locales—a reef may suffer if "overloaded" with such divers. It particularly suffers if that load exceeds the biological carrying capacity of the reef to revitalize and to heal itself.

Human Impacts
Another sport diver impact comes from what I call the "Happy Fish Syndrome", in which dive operators create the illusion of LOTS of fish by actively feeding or chumming when paying divers are in the water. Photographers often perpetuate this ruse by distributing photos of chummed-up fish populations as a natural event, and dive magazines print them. New divers, who don't yet understand the best way to see most fish is to simply remain quietly in one place for a few minutes, are truly the ones being baited. (Indeed, one of the reasons sport diving has such a high attrition rate is that divers expect to quickly see what the photos and films and slick glossy magazines promise; when they don't, they become disillusioned.)

Most biologists agree feeding alters wildlife behavior and makes the animals more dependent on man—even if the bait used is similar to the natural diet. In the case of feeding otherwise shy sharks, the practice also creates a relationship between human and food the predator may remember the next time he spots a diver out zipping about. Besides feeding, other concerns are:
  • Harassing manatees, sea turtles, and whale sharks by touching or otherwise disturbing them.
  • Unhooking sea horses from where they are tethered so they can be photographed free-floating.
  • Scaring puffer fish so they puff up, for fun or photos.


Lessons from the Deep
To their credit, the individual diving consumer indicates a willingness to do this. In one phone-in survey by a dive industry magazine a few years ago, readers in a ratio of 6 to 1 said they would definitely choose a dive destination based on its "eco-sensitivity." Another poll showed divers would be willing "to pay a nominal fee to help fund marine protection efforts in outstanding dive areas" by a 21:1 ratio. Funding such reserves—such as the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the Bonaire Marine Park—offers hope for both setting rules and enforcing them.

Although ignorant divers do leave eco-scars in their wake, the fact is many care, and most respond well to education. Dive consumers seem willing to donate time and money to conserve the marine environment. And public officials are coming realize the true value of protecting reefs as a long-term economic investment by creating specially designed parks sanctuaries—of which there now some 1,306 worldwide.

A key issue in marine parks takes land-zoning concepts to sea. In this way, such a park is zoned for consumptive and non-consumptive uses, including:
  • shell and fish collecting
  • sport and commercial fishing
  • scuba diving
  • Some areas are closed periodically for revitalization, while a few reefs are off limits except for research
Sport divers can leave the environment better than they found it. But to do so requires thoughtful activism, as well as a willingness by the individual diver, local dive shops, and dive resorts to practice meaningful conservation.



Bill Belleville, an Away.com contributing editor, is a Florida-based writer specializing in nature and marine issues. He contributes widely to national magazines and has scripted and co-produced two PBS documentaries. River of Lakes: A Journey on Florida's St. Johns River has recently been published by University of Georgia Press.