Dismayed & Bewildered...

[MN Lakeman]

My daughter just returned from Australia & New Zealand - a whirlwind tour in 2 & half weeks. Her final stop before coming home: Cairns. Because of time constraints, she was able to only do a full day of diving aboard an un-named dive operation, which seemed to cater to beginner, novice divers. In every one of her 3 dives, the dive master accompanying divers literally endorsed touching & handling sealife. Actual examples: "petting" sea turtles, sticking his hands into the giant clams to watch for reaction & the one that really disgusts me: picking up a sea cucumber & SQUEEZING it to show his "students" how the tentacles pop out. Seriously - is this what new divers should be shown?? I've been diving all over the Carribean for years, & I have never witnessed such disregard to marine life. My wife & I are soon leaving for a lengthy Australian trip & or course will not be missing the opportunity to dive GBR. It is my hope that this isn't a common "protocal" with GBR dive operators.

 

[almitywife]

queensland is a tourist market and those that dive the one day usually have a wish list bordering on demand of critters they want to see.....

considering their main market is the asian industry im not surprised by the touching you tell us about.... my experience with operators when i have been in a group of aussies is usually we are told not to touch

cheers and i hope you enjoy your trip

 

[Tassie_Rohan]

I haven't seen such behaviour on any QBR liveaboards. All the multiday liveaboards I've been on do an excellent job of enforcing a 'look but don’t touch' policy.

Still – a few of the dayboats out of cairns may be a different matter. Many are cattle boats that take dozens (and some cases it seems like 100s) of typically new or very inexperienced divers and snorkellers out to a few fixed, shallow and, in my opinion, well trashed, sites. Many of these tourists have no qualms touching or molesting wildlife, despite warnings and briefings on the trip out.

Although I don't condone the behaviour of the dive master I can see how someone diving such sites day after day with such divers may give in to temptation and start demonstrating wildlife to them.

If it was me, and if I was concerned, then I’d try to stop the behaviour by writing to the manger of the operation. The last thing we need is enforcing bad habits in new divers. Given that the day boats go to only a handful of sites on the 1900 km long GBR I'm not too concerned about the effect of such divers on the reef.

Cheers,
Rohan.

 

[alcina]

Absolutely let the owners/managers know - they may have no idea, they may be being lied to by staff about what goes on or they may encourage their guides to do this sort of thing. But they need to know it's not OK!

Your daughter should have done this on the day and immediately called the DM on it in a little side chat, too, if she was offended by the behaviour. But it's still better for her to do it now than not do it at all.

Until divers start standing up and demanding more respect from all dive guides, the dive guides will continue to do the things they get positive feedback for, and unfortunately there are a lot of divers out there who don't get the whole "respect" thing.

 

[TSandM]

When we planned our Australia trip, I was warned against day boats out of Cairns. Sounds like the people who warned me were right.

 

[stormysea]

I have to say I have never seen this and have always been told of the no touching allowed rules. We also did day trips from Cairns and from Townvilles and still didn't see this kind of behaviour.

 

[Gen San Chris]

Thats so sad that people do things like that but sometime the divemasters can get overwealmed by their guests and do things that are out of caracter! We can control it here in Gen San as we do not get big groups of divers and we can control them!
Not all GBR day boats do stuff like that i am sure!