How are divers destroying the reefs?

In my first blog posting I said that scuba divers are contributing to the destruction of our reefs.  Statistics say that over ¼ of our coral reefs are already dead.  Destination Scuba says that an average of 600 Square miles of living coral reef is completely destroyed in the Pacific Ocean each year, with more being destroyed each year.  But how, you may ask do divers have anything to do with this?  Scuba divers affect and damage reefs in 5 different ways.

1.       Excited divers kicking their fins in an effort to propel themselves can kick and break the corals without even noticing what they are doing.  I have seen people do this many times, people get so distracted by the action going on in front of them that they don’t pay attention to what is behind them.  I have even had my regulator kicked out of my mouth by unaware divers who just kept going oblivious to what they have done.

2.       Divers grabbing coral in an attempt to stabilize themselves.  This is especially true for inexperienced divers who can’t control their buoyance.  They find themselves floating away from the bottom so they grab a hold of the first thing they see which is the coral.  Divers who are unable to control their buoyance also bump and grind down the reef, destroying it as they go.

3.       People stealing parts of the reef to take home.  While most dive outfits strictly forbid this, people still try to snag a piece of the reef as a souvenir. 

4.       Dive boat anchors.  Many dive companies like to get you as close to the reef as they can so when you’re in the water you don’t have to swim as far.  This means that they drop their massive dive boat anchor directly onto the reefs crushing everything beneath it.

5.       Pollution.  Many dive companies, especially in developing countries don’t have rules against littering in the ocean.  I’ve been on dive trips where people are allowed to throw their garbage into the water while having lunch about the reef. 

So these are the five main ways that divers destroy reefs.  You may be thinking to yourself, I’ve touched or seen coral on the beach before and it is as hard as a rock, how can a divers fin kick cause enough damage to destroy a reef?  Most coral reefs are hard on the inside but the outer layer is very delicate and can be damaged quite easily.  Coral is made from an organism called polyps.  These polyps create a hard exoskeleton to protect themselves and when they die they leave the exoskeleton behind.  This cycle repeats over years and this is how many types of hard corals grow.  For this reason the living polyps on the outside are very susceptible to damage.  Soft corals are a different story, they are one single unit and can be destroyed much easier and ripped apart just like a small plant. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral.html.  You could imagine the impact hundreds of people walking through a forest has on the small plants in the area, it is much the same for coral reefs.

So now that we know how coral is damaged and why, next week I will look at some studies done on different reefs around the world examining the impact of reefs dived on vs. untouched reefs.  The findings are startling.  I hope to see you next week!