People!!! What are we doing? Scenario……

You are swimming along at about 45 feet, looking at the beautiful fish in front of you. They are so colorful and provide such a contrast from the beautiful coral formations which they swim around. What a sight!! Nature’s perfect short story. Wait a minute….that is a funny looking fish. You swim closer to check it out hoping it is nothing dangerous. You get closer and see that it is a pair of diver’s legs and fins sticking out of the reef because they are poking around with their hands (or small metal rod) trying to either get a piece of coral to take home or to scare out some wildlife. You look to their side and see a patch where the reef has begun to die off. The colors are gone, the reef seeming dead and sparse. You look back the diver who is physically crawling all over the reef. You look back at the dead patch of reef. You look at the diver and you are overcome with sudden urge to grab the divers fins, pull them off the reef and have the “Poor Diver Performance” police take them away and charge them.

Unfortunately, I believe this is something we have all seen. Maybe some of us dive in cold fresh water and see less color but you still see divers that crawl all over the bottom. The beauty of scuba diving is that sensation that you are flying. Floating up and down (or taking off like a plane) over the topography of the bottom with just a controlling breath or exhale. Well, I have seen many people that were grounded and could not keep their hands or feet off the bottom. I believe what I have been told: “Do not touch the coral. Once you touch the coral, that area gets infected or crushed and begins to die off which in turn can spread throughout the entire (that specific) coral formation. This is one way that our reefs die by divers.

I was a new diver once so I know all about poor or unpracticed buoyancy. I know that this can (and usually) comes with continued practice. NOT ALWAYS!!! I am from a place called “cold water country”….diving in the cold waters of Canada I endure the chilly so that I will be practiced up for the warm on vacations. I know too many warm water divers (won’t dive the cold waters at home) that unfortunately need the practice on their skills. Certification is just the start people. It means you know what it takes to dive safely. You, and only you, are responsible to make sure that you fully grasp the skills and practice and improve on them so you are not one of the divers that drops on top of a reef.

We are only one problem but I can’t stress enough the importance of practicing our skills as divers. If we leave them idle for 10 or 11 months a year and only dive one or twice on vacation, then we are likely going to lose some of what we “learned”. Not every warm water diver is a bad diver AND I have seen a number of terrible divers with tons of dives logged. I just hope that the bad divers and the reef sickness do not remove the reefs from my future or future generations of good divers. We are responsible for making sure the areas that we dive remain in good shape for future divers. Let’s dive responsibly.

This article has some really good information in it and brings home some of the points.