Flower Garden Banks requests all visitors to sterilize dive gear.

[Wookie]

From the Fling Charters facebook page:

Many of you may have already heard about the outbreak of Caribbean Coral Disease on the rise. Florida has already been hit and is experiencing one of the largest disease outbreaks on record.

To protect the FGBNMS the sanctuary is asking that all diving gear be dunk in a solution of Chlorohexadine before diving the sanctuary.

The MV Fling will be helping with this by requiring all our divers to dunk all their gear before each trip.

Below are pictures of all the gear in the tubs.

If anyone had any questions, please give us a call.

Sharon

 

[Mrs. B]

What about boat hulls

 

[Wookie]

What about boat hulls

Regulations prohibit any vessel over 100 feet from using the moorings, so it's unlikely that a smaller vessel has the legs to go from the keys to the Flower Gardens without stopping in fresh water somewhere for fuel.

I don't know if fresh water kills whatever is causing the disease, as no one knows what is causing it. But a nice fresh water rinse is a pretty good start.

So, yes. Boat hulls get rinsed too.

 

[arew+4]

Boat hulls generally have antifouling paint, generally with some level of anti microbial properties. And then there is the surface area thing.

 

[Akimbo]

What about boat hulls

Don't forget fIshing nets, ballast water, and cooling water in standby gen sets... it is all pretty inconsequential compared to circulating ocean currents.

 

[Mrs. B]

We had a lot of invasive species precautions
in Hawaii

 

[Wookie]

Yes. Hawaii is on top of that whole invasive species thing. They do not want brown tree snakes. Me either. Florida is a huge fail.

 

[Akimbo]

Regulations prohibit any vessel over 100 feet from using the moorings, so it's unlikely that a smaller vessel has the legs to go from the keys to the Flower Gardens without stopping in fresh water somewhere for fuel.

That's interesting, I never gave it much thought. We don't have many marine refueling stations near significant river-fed estuaries on the West Coast. San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound are the only two of significance I can think of but they are far from freshwater. Does mooring in these freshwater areas significantly effect the antifouling effort?

 

[arew+4]

We had a lot of invasive species precautions
in Hawaii

Don't they call them Howlies or something?

 

[Mrs. B]

Don't they call them Howlies or something?

Haulies have been there seven generations or more, so only fishing off Molokai or claiming scuba divers have right of way with canoe races