How important is knowing marine life?

[raviepoo]

In my opinion, wrecks are only interesting as habitats for living things. I have taken classes in Fish ID and coral monitoring. I conduct fish abundance surveys for the Reef Envirinmental Education Foundation on almost every dive.

I don't understand tht mentality of people who say that shallow, warm water diving is boring. There is so much life on a reef, or in the sand flats. Every location is different and they change from dive to dive depending on what critters decide to show themselves. I've even had a great dive at a site full of finger coral devastated by a hurricaine because I knew how to find the life that remained there.

 

[mddolson]

I dive in primarily fresh waters of the great lakes.
I do make the occational trip to the Carribean, and east to the Atlantic.

I respect all marine life, and all ways avoid disturbing things.

In partiular, I pay particular attention to nasty things,(that might hurt me) in the region I'm diving.

ie:
sea urchines,
sting rays burried in sand,
other venomous animals
fire coral.

I remember diving once at Cabo San Lucas.
The dive guide had forgoten to mention the surge, it's quite strong at times. The usual clearance of a meter (3 ft) was inadequate.
We needed to leave about 3 meters clearance (10ft) to avoid being slammed into things.
Interesting dive though, saw every thing 3 times, but not for weak stomachs or tendancy to be motion sick.

Mike D

 

[Amanda]

Like Diving Gal said, it's important to know what you're admiring, even if sometimes it is diffivult to keep track of all those species...

As a student in Biology and Coastal Protection, it's something I definitey care about.

 

[DennisW]

My interest in diving is due to many things, however, invading a totally alien environment is the most important. Any way you look at it, we are aliens when we enter the underwater world. The life we encounter is varied and extremely interesting to me. I also want to know those species that can do harm. Some are harmful enough to injure severely or even kill humans. Many of those dangerous life forms are very small and hard to see. I want to know where they are and what they look like in order to avoid interacting with them in a dangerous (to me) manner.

 

[Jersey]

Dr Bill - you're my hero! I wanted to be a marine biologist as a little girl, then reality (organic chemistry) appeared on my schedule one semester. (But I never lost my love for learning about living things - plant or animal.) Then came psychology, entailing observation of behaviors. Combine those two things & I am in heaven hanging out & watching the marine life, knowing what it is, what it is doing, why it does that & I could go on & on! I get to see, firsthand, all the stuff I studied & read about for so long. This is much to the dismay of my friends who dive to explore wrecks, retrieve artifacts, see who can bag the biggest bugs, or spearfish tog for dinner. Not that I am opposed to lobster or tog dinners, I would rather discuss symbiotic relationships or the camouflage techniques of what we just saw. Much too cerebral for most of my crew. That's fine with me - that's why we have vanilla & chocolate. The beauty of diving is that two of us can do the same dive, one buggin' & one simply observing.

As for knowing what is harmful, that is always a side benefit!

 

[jepuskar]

For me, I'm pretty happy with just being surrounded by the different life.

Occasionally I will try and research something I saw, but couldn't identify. The names we give these fish are irrelevant...names mean nothing to the fish and they certainly don't matter much when we are down there.

I just like to observe their behavior and hopefully catch some of them breeding :nod:

 

[Depth Gauge]

By all means Jepuskar bring protection.

 

[jepuskar]

I always wear protection..usually 3mm, other parts though require 7mm protection as they require Extra comfort.

:devious:

 

[Depth Gauge]

Excellent. Each job requires the right tool.

 

[kelpmermaid]

what I think. I like to see who is on the reef and know what they are doing, and have been involved in a number of key species and fish counts. Learning about the animals and plants makes every dive more interesting.