Do you "give back"?

Over the last week or so, I've been involved in forming a GUE Affiliate organization here in Seattle. One of the major purposes of forming this affiliate is to launch a branch of Project Baseline here in Seattle. Project Baseline is an ambitious concept, to try to gain as much documentation of dive areas as possible, so that in ten years, we won't be dependent on individual memories to say, "There used to be a lot more fish here!"

I know of a number of other organizations trying to gather and make available data that only divers can provide. CINDAQ in Mexico is placing Sensus Pro sensors in the underwater caves, to gather information on depth and water temperature, to try to document some of the flow dynamics in the aquifers there. People are encouraged to "sponsor" sensors -- they purchase them, and the dive pros place them in the caves, and retrieve them at intervals and download the data. And, of course, if you are a cave diver, you can do what I do, and retrieve your own sensor and download it.

REEF here in the PNW is an attempt to validate and collect diver data on marine life populations, and Reef Check in California is a more rigorous form of the same thing. I also know of divers who volunteer with aquariums, or do video dives to pipe live feeds of the underwater world to children and their parents on boats.

In Southern California, there have been net retrieval projects, to remove derelict fishing nets that are continuing to harvest marine life.

These are just the things I know about. Being involved with GUE has put me in touch with a number of conservation/documentation efforts, but I am sure there are lots more.

Do you do something to "give back" to the marine environment we love? Tell me about where you are, and what you are doing -- perhaps we will inspire other folks to join your efforts, or start their own.

About all I do is to pick up what trash I can haul back to the boat. Other than that I spent a few days planting staghorn coral babies a couple years ago.

I can't say I do much but I've been trying to work up an incident stress debrief system that dive shops can give their employees when an accident occurs. When dive operators go back to work "business as usual" the day following a death on one of their boats, I don't have a big beef with it, but the people directly involved in the incident often have a lot of emotion they need to deal with appropriately. Be it guilt, fear, just plain sadness, or whatever. It seems to me, as an outsider never involved in any scuba incident, that the system isn't available to many operators to provide decent support for their people to deal with said emotions.

Unfortunately I haven't gotten very far with it but I'm spurred to renew my efforts. Thanks.

Edit: Ack! Somehow I missed the "marine environment" portion of that. I definitely only pick up trash at this point. We have a local volunteer group that does wreck and specimen mapping but I haven't actually gone out with them yet. I'm on the list but have been unable to commit at the appropriate times. One of these days I'll be able to help but so far zippo.

Reef Check California, here. It's a wonderful way to give back and the training makes you a better and more knowledgeable diver.

Have you explored the possibility of starting a Reef Check Northwest? Seems to me that the protocols would translate very well.


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Volunteered on a trip to put new mooring buoy anchors into the ledge at an offshore marine sanctuary reef in the Gulf, so no one will be tempted to drop anchor on the coral. Lotsa work but good teamwork-type fun. One of the boats that has used the reef does this each year, in cooperation with NOAA.

Every three months here at Jupiter Dive Center we help to clean up the Juno Beach Pier in conjunction with the Loggerhead Marine Life Center here in Jupiter, FL. We also help to release sea turtle hatchlings as well when they are ready.

It's cleanup day under the Juno Beach Pier

November Pier Cleanup | Facebook

Trash pick up, from shore or sub-surface, is something we can all do. We can also all dive responsibly. That is, stay off the reef, don't chase anything, don't kick up the sand which can settle on and damage coral, don't harass wildlife. You know- be a good diver. I also have come to believe (and it took a while to get there) that lion fish removal is a positive "give back." Just limit yourself to those invasive critters, and leave the other fish be. I want to thank TSandM for his good example of marine environmental activism. I am a bit more limited here in Colorado, but do support a number of projects and foundations financially- something else we can all do. AND.. in November my wife and I were able to participate in a sea turtle hatchling release in Mexico, with Centro Ecological Akumal. But that wasn't really a "give back" as the experience was priceless!
DivemasterDennis

Aside from the beach cleanup with Project Aware out in Montauk, NY last year, I'm ashamed to say I've not given back to the environment. :depressed:

Great thread, Lynne, and I know it will definitely inspire me to do more as I hear what others are doing.

I give back by helping to make divers and others more aware of how things we do every day affect the water ... as they said in Finding Nemo, all drains lead to the sea. Being a Public Works employee for a major city, I have first-hand experience with how storm water runoff affects coastal waters.

One of my goals next year is to reach out to kids ... through the local public libraries ... by giving talks and showing pictures of what we see in Puget Sound, and tying that into how the health of our waterways is directly related to things we do every day. I think educating kids ... getting them thinking early in life about how important it is to think about the impact of what we consume, what we throw away, and what we put down the drain every day. As divers, this is something we should all be aware of and support ... but even more importantly, reaching out to the vast majority of our neighbors who do not dive, but whose everyday activities have an impact on our public waterways ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)