Picking up rocks and combing through seaweed?

[TMHeimer]

Every time we travel to dive we use a fair amount of resources and generate a lot of waste. Even using the internet is energy intensive. A single Google search is like burning a single match. The Haber process of industrial nitrogen fixation from the atmosphere accounts for half of the nitrogen in your body; without this only half of us would be around right now as natural nitrogen fixation is insufficient to support current global levels of agricultural productivity, vegetarian or not. So while ethically, aesthetically and romantically “distressing”, from a practical standpoint poking a pufferfish is low on my list of “things I put a lot of energy worrying about”.

excellent analysis.

 

[wnissen]

I do a good bit of hiking in forests, and I often think about the parallels with diving. Maybe a rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't do it in a national or state park/forest, don't do it in the ocean. There are such things as marine protected areas (MPAs)/parks. Not all of the ocean is a marine protected park, but it wouldn't hurt if divers were to treat areas frequented by divers with similar care expected in marine parks. Protected forests usually have marked trails, with instructions to stay on the marked trails so as localize the damage, however minor it may be, caused by each visitor's footsteps. That isn't feasible in the ocean. However, digging stuff up is discouraged, if not illegal. In backcountry campsites, you're asked to be careful to limit what you disturb. I keep these thoughts with me when I dive.

Yep, it's basically, "If everyone who came through here did what I did, would I still want to come here?" Digging a small cathole off a lightly traveled trail is fine. But you can't do that on Mt. Whitney because there would be too many people doing the same thing. The environmental context is everything.

 

[100days-a-year]

I tried to limit my interactions with sealife and live bottoms to sustainably killing only species determined to be safe to take and always obeying size and seasonal spawning closures while trying not to poke, prod or disturb those who were not destined to die that day.
Also tried to remove as much debris and invasive life as possible.

People flying to dive destinations then boarding fossil fuel burning liveaboards and then using the energy to compress breathing air should probably keep their hypocritical piehole unopened and focus on their own behaviors. It's sad to see people who routinely use multiple times the average persons resources consistently be world's largest Karens about other people's minor infractions.

 

[Lorenzoid]

. . .
People flying to dive destinations then boarding fossil fuel burning liveaboards and then using the energy to compress breathing air should probably keep their hypocritical piehole unopened and focus on their own behaviors. It's sad to see people who routinely use multiple times the average persons resources consistently be world's largest Karens about other people's minor infractions.

It would be that much worse if all those "people flying to dive destinations then boarding fossil fuel burning liveaboards and then using the energy to compress breathing air" were to also mess with the marine life at dive sites that see hundreds of divers a day, as some sites do in those kinds of destinations. My thinking is that, whatever kind of diving each of us does, each of us can do our bit to preserve the natural world.

 

[Celt]

Maybe they like been picked up, a bit like giving them a cuddle,

 

[The Ruttmeister]

.... If only half of all the big fish (and bycatch) was taken by commercial fishermen and dumped into a field in Kansas the fish population would not be decimated.

I hope you are right... because we are already well past that point.

 

[TMHeimer]

I hope you are right... because we are already well past that point.

Yeah you can't go back. Maybe if we all just stopped eating fish for a couple of decades.

 

[dianna912]

I tried to limit my interactions with sealife and live bottoms to sustainably killing only species determined to be safe to take and always obeying size and seasonal spawning closures while trying not to poke, prod or disturb those who were not destined to die that day.
Also tried to remove as much debris and invasive life as possible.

People flying to dive destinations then boarding fossil fuel burning liveaboards and then using the energy to compress breathing air should probably keep their hypocritical piehole unopened and focus on their own behaviors. It's sad to see people who routinely use multiple times the average persons resources consistently be world's largest Karens about other people's minor infractions.

That took a rather drastic turn from "this guy is doing some fantastic work" to... well.. I'll just leave it at saying kudos for your efforts towards sustainability, because that is some awesome stuff. I love to see people setting a great example. As to you other point (I'll ignore the insults, as I'm sure they aren't directed at any one person in particular...) just like I'm sure certain things raise your hackles, especially in regards to fishing, this post was born from the same kind of hackle raising. Diving a dive site with a ton of divers, from the truly novice, first timers, to the extremely experienced, it is just disconcerting to see a dozen of the experienced divers doing these things, and setting that example for the younger divers. The more we know, and the more we speak up, the less damage we may collectively do. Ironically, another diver was aghast because snorkelers were diving down, picking up starfish to bring to the surface, let the other snorkelers look at them, then letting them fall back down to the ground. It made me wonder if the snorkelers had seen divers pick up the starfish and thought it was okay to do so.

As for the environmental impact of dive travel, this is an important topic, to be sure. That would make for a very interesting thread, although it'd probably have the potential to go off the rails pretty rapidly. Our idea, personally, is to become research divers (currently working on it) and focus our dive travel on research trips. We also eliminated meat, since studies have shown that meat actually creates more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation industry. It would be fascinating to try to figure out what our personal footprint looks like, though.

 

[pauldw]

It’s important to remember that sea life loves us and wants to help us.

 

[100days-a-year]

We also eliminated meat, since studies have shown that meat actually creates more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation industry. It would be fascinating to try to figure out what our personal footprint looks like, though.

I'm sure plant based diets are better but the US federal studies done by multiple universities have meat producing 2-3% of GHG produced by all agriculture. Agriculture produces 9% of all GHG and travel 59%. Air travel being the biggest producer of GSG per passenger KM by a factor of 2. There is little way of quantifying GSG from meat animals as no one has ever measured the methane they produce other than theoretically.
As well, the domesticated ruminants used for food have largely just replaced the wild herds that used to exist. It's an issue certainly but the only places I see it champiioned are mostly vegan activist sites.