What is disappearing?
Our Ocean ecology is collapsing. The near-shore shallow reef structure is what you’re seeing. Your vision, measured by geological time, is myopic. At best, it is a snapshot.
Most every trip report has some commentary about “lack of fish life”. These comments are a highly subjective impression of a mere glance at a local reef. Any time I see a comment like this, I switch off. In my view, these hallmark limited perspectives.
Not saying it isn’t true. I’m merely noting that the writer is feeling the need to show how observant they imagine that they are. Smarter than the “annual fish count” people. There is life everywhere, you just picked a bad day, or maybe your observational skills aren’t as good as you imagine.
I have now seen four SB threads commenting about how some specific reef improved because of the absence of divers during the pandemic. YGTBFKM.
Are fish populations waning? Yes they are. So what’s your point? Maybe switch and do tech diving, wrecks, or maybe learn to sail.
This might amuse you: become a Lion Fish hunter and fix that problem. You go girl.
Still good AND accessible?
That’s the problem right there. Everything is accessible. Depends on your wallet and comfort level. In. 1972, Grand Cayman was still kind of edgy. Nassau and Freeport were just about to be on a downward slide.
The Caribbean places we went in 1974, places that now have hotels, these were destinations that most SB readers might imagine they dream of, but not many would actually embark on the adventure that it all once used to be. Dive travelers are not so adventurous any longer.
Unassailable proof: In the Caribbean, everybody babbles about oh-boy Guanaja (Dunbar Rock) or Cayos Cochinos or San Andres. These are still in the “adventure travel” category, at least for the Caribbean in 2021. Does anybody ever pack up and go? Count them on one hand.
If it’s easy to get to, it is already substantially degraded. Can you suggest a weeklong dive vacay with direct flights, with great diving, and entertainment (island vibe) for my non-diving sun-bunny?
No, no I can not.
There are countless dive spots in the Caribbean that remain quite nice. Why? Because the bother to get there is keeping you in Cozumel. And you keep voting it Readers Choice in the advertising driven popularity contest by Scuba Diving Magazine, Undercurrent the same.
I want to see big animals.
Try the zoo. Or better yet, dive a lot, maybe someday you’ll begin to see cool stuff.
Or you can do the lowest common denominator, take your GoPro camera to a canned Shark Dive or Dolphin Rodeo. Get your ticket punched. Do the Blue Hole during the same trip.
Pay 1.5 to 2x more $ than land based and do a liveaboard. It costs more, it has to be better.
Dive travel used to be an exercise in adventure. Your perception of adventure has been attenuated to a McDonalds pablum.
What will be gone in the next ten years?
Everything. If the world economy allows us to continue our supremely heavy carbon foot print that defines diving? If the economy allows it, We will build 8,000 foot runways, fly 300 vacationers, keep them entertained, drunk and fed, pump air at 3,000psi, drag loads of divers out and dump ‘Em in. Can you imagine the cost of fuel?
Or maybe you can’t. Let’s say the world economy takes a dump. Or maybe just enough that the demographic of the dive vacationer (or vacation diver) decides that $3,ooo to Cancun just ain’t doable this year.
The discretionary dollar becomes more discrete every year.
So, “if” dive vacationing takes a severe downturn. (Hint: it did before COVID) Reef conditions will not improve in your limited lifetime.
We are in a dying hobby that is practiced in a dying liquid.
if you want to pursue the “warm water pretty fish” style of dive travel (my personal fave), go, enjoy. See what is there. Learn what is killing it...besides your trip itself.
The Ocean still offers wonderment. Do not bemoan “how it used to be”. Take an underwater Naturalist class. Find naturalist DMs and follow them like you’re a puppy dog. Lose the camera and your ego. Dive a lot and perfect your buoyancy. Become a masterful diver. Do not collect certifications, gather knowledge.
This is truly a “life sport”. With luck, you will dive late into your years. I can barely walk now after 50 years of serious skiing, but I can still scuba dive. Just push me in. Diving now since 1959, got a cert card in 1968. After 45 years of dive travel, I can validly say that I have seen changes over repeated visits. If someone has 15 years to a few locations? That’s interesting. Give it some time and come back later.
I once asked “the” old man of the island’s diving community, I asked him, “why don’t you dive anymore”. His reply? “I just can’t”. Meaning, he just could not bear what now lay under the waves. What he had seen, what he knew, now gone...it had killed his spark.
The most interesting people scuba dive. Go, learn from them.