Environmental Impact

wetman · Jul 17, 2002

Has anyone given any thought to the environmental impact of diving?

We've recently gone through 10 or so years of zebra muscle growth from nothing to everywhere here in ontario. Earlier you always heard about washing your boat before you brought it from waterbody to waterbody.

Does anyone think of that from a gear perspective?

Just curious. I've never given it a second thought til it was brought to my attention lately.

Any other environmental concerns would be good to mention here as well (other than the obvious don't stand on the coral type stuff - i'm talking things you might not typically think about)

Steve

miked · Jul 17, 2002

Wetman,
Good question, and an interesting concept regarding contamination from dive gear. In fact, the idea of "avoiding contamination of the local aquatic environment"*, is one of the reasons that, if you wish to dive in "The Living Sea" at Disneyworld, you cannot use your own equipment.
It is probably worth considering for other "aquatic environments" as well.
Good luck,
Mike

*That was the explanation givento me by one of the Disney people.

Guam_Diver · Jul 17, 2002

I'm always surprised by the apathy I see from people about damaging coral. They don't seem to worry about breaking pieces off with their fins. I usually tell them about it immediately if I see it. It's usually tourists who won't be back to dive that site ever again, so they don't care how it looks after they leave! Grrr!

otter-cat · Jul 17, 2002

I am always concerned about the lead oxide that leaches from soft weight belts, especially as they get older. It's that milky white stuff that drips from the weight pack. Of course, all lead weights that aren't coated will generate a small amount of lead oxide when placed in seawater, but the soft weights are especially problematic since there is so much more surface area of lead per pound of weight. I know that some soft-weight belts encase the lead pellets in plastic, but it seems to eventually develop leaks and let water in contact with the lead after enough use.

Of course, if we all only used coated lead weights, I wonder how many pieces of plastic or epoxy from the coatings we would leave behind....:boom:

Rooster1 · Jul 17, 2002

a fair amount of the diving we do is around gazzillions of these little Zebra mussels. In fact one of our last dives, my dive buddy stripped some off and old schooners wheel, (it was really nice to see the wood that the wheel was made of other then a lot of Zebra mussels). however we have never had any on us. I think that is close to impossible because we are always moving and these mussels are just stuck to anything thats hard like they are dead.

jbd · Jul 17, 2002

fertilized eggs of the zebra mussels? Could they be clinging to your gear?

gzscuba · Jul 17, 2002

Those zebra mussel eggs are meant to live in the water. I would think that if you took proper care of your gear - washing and drying it off - that should kill any fertilized eggs.

wetman · Jul 18, 2002

I would think that potentially the little bit of water left in certain things like the bc and possibly even neoprene that wasn't thoroughly dried might be able to hold such creatures. I must admit though i have no idea what conditions would be necessary for that or even if the mesh in neoprene coatings would be large enough.

Even lately i've been more conscious of some of the smaller life around as i've been concentrating almost completely on the floaty things for my slow accents. Theres a lotta life at that scale that could easily find its way into smaller pockets on gear.

steve

divedivedive! · Jul 19, 2002

On a completely different scale, I'm reminded of the Black Sea analogy described by Colin Woodward in "Ocean's End", wherein comb (or was it moon?) jellyfish brought in in the ballasts of intercontinental oceanfaring ships from foreign seas have since eaten most other species native to the region and today account for virtually all of the environmental biomass there.

Scary stuff, especially taking into account the human impact, on fishing for sustenance and business, the tourism industry, and even in terms of the regional social web.

Goldminer · Jul 19, 2002

Originally posted by jbd
fertilized eggs of the zebra mussels? Could they be clinging to your gear?

Originally posted by gzscuba
I would think that if you took proper care of your gear - washing and drying it off - that should kill any fertilized eggs.

The second stage of a mussel's life is, I believe, a microscopic larvae with no shell that floats around in the water. So, how about the water trapped inside your BC? Mussel larvae could be floating in that. Damn tough to get all of that out and dry. You could expel some of it on your next dive.

Environmental Impact

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