Leaving our aquatic friends alone.

[Cali_diver]

Ok, new diver here. There, thats out of the way. I hve been watching some you tube videos of a wreck that I was interested in diving this next weekend. What I saw on one of these videos kind of made me a bit angry. The diver and his friend were constantly touching, picking up and moving the wildlife. From picking up a sea slug and then just letting it go to float back to the sand bottom, to peeling a star fish off the coral to chasing an eel in the cracks of the wreck. It seemed like they had to touch and move everything that moved. One clip showed the poor sea slug being thrown about by the other divers fin action as he was on the bottom kicking away.

Maybe I am just to new to this but in my training they stressed a look but dont touch rule. We should observe but be aware of our fragile friends including the living coral. How do we handle this type of behavior if it observed in real time?

First, these divers looked like they had poor buoyancy skills which is very apparent in the video quality and probably why they seem to touch everything. They looked like they were just crawling all over the wreck. When I see people placing their fins on things I will usually put my muck stick under their fin and lift it off the reef. Most people will acknowledge and try harder not to do it, but some ignore and press harder with their fin. (I have even inserted my back between a fin and a poor frogfish getting pummeled by a fin). Not sure what else you can do other than speak up or tell the trip leader/captain/DM so they can address the problem. If I have the opportunity I will try to educate people about stuff they see under the water so that they might approach it differently.

Second, the camera person reminds me of Sid, the Toy Story neighbor kid. I don't think he will ever stop poking things.

FYI..There are some very cool creatures that live symbiotically with sea cucumbers so many people will "gently" move around and lift up the cucumber to look for other creatures, so you will see that occasionally (they don't usually lift them up off the sea floor then drop them though).

 

[Kharon]

However, the Chasing of the Turtle: the video implies it was the DM who chased the turtle. The person shown on the video who does seem to be "herding" a turtle is not a CCV DM, unless they have all started wearing skins in the month since I was there. And I have been there every month in the year (different years obviously) and regardless of conditions, have never seen a CCV DM in anything but a rash guard and dive shorts. I've been there a lot, I know every DM. And I don't believe that was one.

You couldn't be more wrong. Dive boat 1, his name (nickname) is Gringo and he was known to all the guests I talked to during my stay, so you must know him - if, as you claim, you know every DM at CCV.

And as the title says, the video was taken during the best diving over the 2 weeks I was there. Maybe it was a fluke, but the weather sucked, the vis sucked and there were extremely few adult fish to speak of. The soft coral was beautiful - just no fish. I'm used to Bonaire - Roatan isn't even in the same ballpark.

In addition, on one particularly bad dive with strong current pushing offshore the "DM" (Gringo) left the meeting spot at the mooring block before I got there. On the previous dive he had the boat move to a different mooring. So, not knowing if the boat was going to move again, I had to abort that dive. Not superbly professional.

 

[Hickdive]

The Law of the Buffet should be followed underwater too; "Never touch what you don't intend to eat".

 

[Bubblesong]

Looked like he was sticking his bare hand deep into the sand in the tropics. Aside from disturbing stuff, this doesn't seem the brightest thing to do.

Where is the bobbit worm when you need him?