Every diver should be an eco-friendly diver. Anyone passionate about diving, the ocean, and marine life should be one. As divers, we owe it to the wondrous aquatic world to help preserve it for generations to come. Although every diver has heard the saying take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but bubbles, much more can be easily done. Eco-friendly divers help promote, sustain, and encourage good practices with simple and easy steps that cost them little time and effort. So here are lots of different ways you can be an Eco-friendly diver.
Start From the Comfort of Home
Being an eco-friendly diver starts from the comfort of your computer screen or tablet when booking your next dive trip. Carefully look at the green credentials of your next dive operator. Are they genuinely eco-friendly, or are they just paying lip service? See if they regularly run clean-up dives and beach clean-ups. Do they have a café or snack bar that is environmentally friendly? As a dive operator, does it ban single-use plastic? Is the operator implementing international conservations and environmental standards? Are they accredited by reputed international and local environmental organizations like Green Fins?
While the list of questions is virtually endless, you can also check out reviews of the dive operators. Quite often, eco-friendly divers will highlight good and bad practices in their reviews. So, ensure you find a reputable operator who practices what they preach.
One thing to keep in mind is money! While more often than not, price is a big determining factor when booking an operator. Quality and high environmental standards cost money. Although you should constantly be on the lookout for a good deal from an operator, going for the cheapest option all the time virtually guarantees you are not choosing an eco-friendly operator. Implementing environmental and conservation policies costs little money, so be prepared to vote with your wallet. Being an eco-friendly diver will cost you a little more, but it is a much better option than ignoring the well-being of our ocean!
Choose Your Products Wisely
Choosing your products well is an easy step to take that makes you an eco-friendly diver. While obviously choosing a product that is actually made from coral (think Red and Black coral necklaces) is beyond horrific, you have much more choices to consider.
Eco-friendly divers don’t look just at whether the product is environmentally friendly but also at the company as a whole. It is no good buying “green” products from a company while most of its product lineup is made from illegally harvested rainforest!
Whether you are looking for a mask and snorkel or even an iPhone underwater case, ask yourself if the company selling them is engaged with the environment. Do they actively support eco-friendly and conservation efforts? As a consumer, eco-friendly divers should aim to support companies that deliver and support environmentally friendly products. The great news is that they can do this to almost everything they buy, not just diving-related products.
The second way eco-friendly divers can help is by their actions when away traveling. They should always aim to do no harm to the environment, and one of the easiest and simplest way to do so is by choosing coral-safe sun products and toiletries.
While many toiletries feature microplastics, many sunscreens contain toxic chemicals to corals. So entering the water after applying these products means slowly poisoning the corals you are looking at! Fortunately, many companies now make coral-safe sunscreen, so it is a small first step all divers should start with!
Additionally, many tropical destinations suffer from problems with plastic pollution that plague our oceans overall. When fisting tropical destinations, take a small reusable shopping bag with you. When you are offered plastic bags, kindly decline. If you can even take a few bags and donate them to local conservation efforts, that is even better. Eco-friendly divers take every imaginable step to help combat the utter horror of plastic pollution in our oceans!
Eco-Friendly Dive Practices
The single most significant impact eco-friendly divers have as individuals is through their everyday dive practices. Eco-friendly dive practices have an immediate effect on the then and now.
Buoyancy
Buoyancy is the easiest way a diver can help protect the reef. Arguably in terms of their environmental activities, investing in good buoyancy gives you the highest ecological return on your time.
Divers with excellent buoyancy hover over reefs like butterflies, darting in and pulling back gracefully as they explore the reefs' natural beauty. Their fins never graze any corals, nor do they put their hands on coral to stabilize themselves. Excellent buoyancy means they can explore without leaving a mark on the reef.
This is critically important since divers do impact coral, even accidentally. Some figures from tropical destinations indicate that, on average, a diver breaks 5 grams/ 1/8th of an ounce of coral per dive. Popular dive sites have several hundred divers visiting them each day. Those tiny amounts soon add up to losses in the kilograms/pounds daily. No reef can sustain this kind of attrition day after day, year after year. That is why eco-friendly divers perfect their buoyancy!
Other Environmental Dive Habits
The list of other environmental dive habits eco-friendly divers can undertake is virtually endless. They start from the very obvious like if you see a plastic bag floating in the water column, pick it up, put it in your BCD pocket, and dispose of it after the dive. Other practices require a little more knowledge. For instance, on night dives, avoid shining your torch directly at sleeping fish; it causes them distress and can be very harmful. A typical example is Parrotfish which sleep in a mucus sack they secrete to protect them from predators. If you wake them up, they break the sack, and are unable to make another one that night. So they are now vulnerable to predators.
Another thing eco-friendly divers should be aware of is what to do if marine life approaches them. Do you touch it? Do you swim away or reach out and bat it away? Learning how to interact responsibly with various marine life is crucial to being an eco-friendly diver. However, an excellent rule is to give them as much space as possible and never touch anything.
Be Generous With Your Time
One of the most generous things you can do is give your time. This valuable resource can do a lot of good and can be used by conservation organizations in a very wide range of ways. While the first thing that jumps to mind is taking part in a clean-up dive, you have a lot of other options. Give your time to take part in a beach clean-up; after all, preventing marine debris from entering the ocean in the first place and keeping beaches clean help the underwater world.
Volunteering at a shelter that helps rehabilitate marine life is also a great way to give back and help preserve the underwater world. Alternatively, you can even participate with many different organizations that raise awareness about various issues (including the scourge of plastic pollution in our oceans). The key point is that in many land-based activities, you can be an eco-friendly diver; in fact, you can be an eco-friendly diver without ever getting in the water!
One of the best experiences you can have if you can dedicate the time is volunteering with an NGO for several weeks or months overseas. Working in the field with real scientists and seeing firsthand what it is like to work with a species you are passionate about is a great way an eco-friendly diver can make a big impact relatively quickly.
Make Responsible Choice When Away
When you are traveling, you need to make responsible choices that are eco-friendly. Quite often, you will see divers in a tropical destination tucking into a hearty seafood dinner in the evening after a hard day diving. While seafood is great, ask yourself where the grouper and snapper you are devouring came from! Clearly, it was not transported from the other side of the world; in all likely hood, it was caught locally. Divers consuming seafood caught on the reefs the divers were exploring earlier in the day is never a good idea.
Always keep an eye out when you are traveling and make choices wisely. For instance, if you are thinking of buying something from a café restaurant, look at the tables before you go in. Are there lots of plastic boxes and straws on the tables? If so, make the eco-friendly choice and avoid this establishment.
The important thing is to be aware while you are traveling and use your money wisely. Support local businesses that care about the environment. Be alert, keep an eye out for bad practices, and avoid those businesses whenever possible. Making responsible choices on-site encourages businesses to be eco-friendly and makes it one of the competitive advantages over others, which is ultimately good for the environment.
