Possible southern reef closure

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

I can see how cruise ships coming north towards the island release their waste as they get close but before in Cozumel waters. That waste will then drift to the reefs with the current.

During my one day stop in Cozumel we went to a beach club near Palancar after diving. We were unable to go in the water because of all of the human septic waste that was visible to my discerning eye. Not visible to all the masses who did go in. Wether the cause or not that practice should be stopped.
 
At least the dive ops will be lowering their prices since they will save so much in fuel.
 
I apologize for replying to myself, but I remember some years ago when there was a major dieoff of sea urchins in the Caribbean it turned out that the culprit was ships coming through the Panama Canal bringing non-indigenous disease organisms in from the Pacific. It seems to me far more likely that something like this has brought the White Blight to Cozumel than divers.

Read more about this sea urchin die-off in my latest book, Natural History of Cozumel. The damn things are now making a comeback, but I'm not so sure I am happy about that. It is kinda like if mosquitoes had a massive die-off and then made a comeback. Everybody on Cozumel used to have calcified spines of the suckers under the skin of their hands or feet.
 
1. The lack of park guarda-parques (park rangers) due to retirements
2. The chronic lack of funding for hiring park rangers
3. The overwhelming number of illegal dive operations taking divers to the park. By illegal, they mean dive operations that don’t have park permits and/or are not a tax-paying Mexican business, but are “working under the table”, often with illegal immigrants (Yep, they have lots of those in Mexico, too!) and are basically ignoring park rules.
4. The large number of legal operators who still allow their divers to:
A. Wear gloves
B: Carry spears
C. Carry metal prods
D. Touch the coral
E. Drag their fins on the coral
F. Let their dangles bang the coral
G. Hold onto coral to keep steady for photograph
5. The huge number of operators (legal and illegal) that are taking tourists to El Cielo and allowing them to handle the starfish
6. The coral disease that is killing the reefs
7. The sewage runoff from beach clubs and hotels


In other words, we have been paying marine park fees for absolutely nothing...
 
In other words, we have been paying marine park fees for absolutely nothing...

How do you get that from what I wrote? I explained how ALL the money collected goes to the national pot, then the whole pot gets doled out, with then SOME of it coming back Cozumel's park, but much of that pot ends up going to parks that don't have as much (or any) income as Cozumel does. That is they way "federal" funding works in Mexico. It works that way in the US also: ALL your federal income tax goes to DC, then SOME of it comes back to your community.
 
At least the dive ops will be lowering their prices since they will save so much in fuel.
Probably just the opposite effect...unless they require people at southern locations to come to caleta for their pick-up...
 
To start with I totally agree with Gordon! This ban on diving these areas will do absolutely nothing to help the reefs in Cozumel.
First, I have been keeping up with the coral issues in Cozumel and Florida ever since my last visit to Cozumel in March of this year. We dove a lot of sites but I was saddened to see the amount of damage done to El Islote and a few other sites. Apparently this is a very hard thing to diagnose due to micro changes in water temperature and trying to isolate small particles of chemicals in the water. Basically the reefs are very fragile and things that humans are doing are damaging them. I'm not sure if people have seen the article that was published a few months ago by researchers but they finally figured out what was going on in Florida. You can find other links that talk about this more in-depth but climate change, nitrogen getting into the water from over fertilizing, etc are some of the main issues affecting the reefs. Where have we heard this before? Look no further than the sargassum. Same issue here!

We finally know why Florida’s coral reefs are dying, and it’s not just climate change - The Washington Post

Secondly, if Mexico is so concerned about the reefs in Cozumel why don't they look at the elephant in the room. The cruise ships. I was in Roatan several years ago and I was talking to the locals there and they were telling me about the cruise ship issue there. The ships were basically dumping their sewage in the ocean before getting into port because it was cheaper to pay the fine that dispose of it legally. I'm not sure if this still happens around Roatan but it sounds like it's not the only area getting affected. "Carnival Corp.’s environmental compliance flagged more than 800 incidents from April 2017 to April 2018"

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article229285319.html

Maybe I'm wrong about this. All this sewage and garbage in the water from the cruise ships can't possibly be causing any issues with the reefs. They should just ignore these issues and say... maybe build some more cattle boat ports in Cozumel.

https://www.travelpulse.com/news/cruise/new-cruise-dock-might-be-built-in-cozumel.html

Finally, I may have been a little sarcastic but like Gordan said this ban will do absolutely nothing except to make certain people feel good about banning the diving community from enjoying these beautiful reefs before they die. And yes, these reefs will die because sadly no one wants to address the real reason these organisms are dying. The Great Barrier reef was 25 million years old and we just killed it in the last 20 or so years.

https://nypost.com/2016/10/14/the-great-barrier-reef-is-dead-at-25-million-years-old/

Yep. They should close parts of the park to divers! That should help.
 
I guess they may think it is all the divers that pee in their wetsuits that is causing the problem!

o_O
 
Since they are going to "study" the effects I look forward to the detailed report with data in a few months. In the meantime, where is the baseline study they did?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom