Master Eco Diver

My blog posts this month have been centered on the environment, only fitting since Earth Day was last week. I’ve written about the many environment-specific PADI Specialties: Project AWARE, Coral Reef Conservation, Underwater Naturalist, Fish Identification, Shark Conservation, and Peak Performance Buoyancy.

Sharks are apex predators. They keep the oceans healthy by removing sick aquatic animals and keeping fish populations under control. Shark Conservation is essential for ocean sustainability.

Last month, I wrote about Master Scuba Diver. What would you think if you could be a Master Eco Diver? While not a recognized certification (right now), you could become the Master Eco Diver—Master Scuba Diver with the Eco-twist. How? Easy. You need to follow the same requirements as Master Scuba Diver, but complete environment-specific specialties.

For example:

• Complete PADI Open Water Diver (or equivalent)
• Complete PADI Advanced Open Water Diver (or equivalent)
• Complete PADI Rescue Diver (or equivalent)
• Log fifty(50) dives
• Complete AWARE Fish ID Specialty
• Complete AWARE Coral Reef Conservation Specialty
• Complete Project AWARE Specialty
• Complete the PADI Underwater Naturalist Specialty
• Complete the PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty

Now, you’ve met all of the requirements for being a PADI Master Scuba Diver, focusing on eco-specific specialties. You’re well versed in environmental issues and diving safely. Talk about being the ideal dive buddy!

Remember the AWARE Ten Tips? Let’s take a look at a few of those tips and see what diving courses can help you out.

#1 Buoyancy Expert: Peak Performance Buoyancy helps here

#2 Be a role model: Rescue Diver, Divemaster and Instructor

#3 Take only pictures, leave only bubbles: PADI Digital Underwater Photography

#4 Protect Underwater Life: Underwater Naturalist

#5 Become a Debris Activist: Project AWARE Specialty

#6 Responsible seafood choices: Project AWARE, Underwater Naturalist and FishID

#7 Take Action: AWARE Kids program has some good info on contacting your elected officials

#8 Be an eco-tourist: Maybe not a specialty, but using the PADI Travel network can help

#9 Shrink your carbon footprint: Project AWARE Specialty

#10 Give back: you don’t need training here, just find ways to help support groups like Project AWARE

Here’s a quick quiz on how you can help protect the aquatic environment.

Project AWARE’s #10Tips4Divers

Twas the night before Earth Day…

As divers, we’re natural ambassadors and advocates for the underwater world. Here are ten things you can do to help protect the aquatic world: Project AWARE’s Ten Tips

Project AWARE’s #10Tips4Divers

Be a Buoyancy Expert

Protect the aquatic world by not slamming into a reef or other sensitive environments. When you descend, you should be in control. It’s usually easier on your ears if your head is above everything else. If you assume a skydiver-like position, you can see what’s below you as you descend. Watch where you’re going and don’t drop tank-first. If it has been a while since you’ve been diving, take a refresher. I have many, many logged dives (and many I wish I had logged), but I still make time to check my buoyancy and trim when I go to a new dive site, change gear or change environments. Peak Performance Buoyancy is a great class for you to take to fast-track your buoyancy control.

Be a role model

Show the new divers that you take the aquatic environment seriously and you want to protect it. Divers often learn more from what they see other divers do than what they learned in class. So, remember what you learned in class: good buoyancy control, streamline and don’t touch. As a PADI Instructor and a PADI Course Director, I know that many divers watch what I do. I dive what I teach, because I want to be that role model.

Take only photos, leave only bubbles

A picture is worth a thousand words. An underwater photo, probably a million and even that won’t do it justice. Words and pictures can barely describe the feeling when hundreds of brightly colored fish swarm around and past you. But we can try. Learn to take photos to share the joy of the underwater world with friends. This is part of our role as ambassadors and advocates. I may not be the best of underwater photographers, but with the advent of digital photography, I’m better because I get instant feedback on the photo I just took. While it’s tempting to remove something from the aquatic world, remember everything is part of the aquatic ecosystem. Removing a shell can remove habitat for other creatures and rarely looks as good as it did when it was in it’s normal environment. [And some shells have aquatic life that can be dangerous…so don’t touch!]

Protect Underwater Life

Divers often want to think that aquatic life has human-like traits or traits of our domestic house pets. When you learn more about aquatic life in programs like the PADI Underwater Naturalist Specialty, you’ll have a better understanding of how our views are often biased. While you might want to touch a fish swimming nearby, remember that their scales are covered with a mucous-like substance to protect them and help prevent disease transmission. Petting them can damage that protective coating and leave them vulnerable to infection.

Divers at a beach and underwater cleanup. Earth Day is a great time to get involved!

Become a Debris Activist

If you see litter, pick it up. Trash abounds, and some items made of plastic can persist in the environment for hundreds of years. During that time span, debris can trap, poison and kill aquatic life. I’ve organized several cleanups in fresh-water areas and helped clean up in marine areas. Do your part and help pick up trash that is polluting our aquatic environment. But be careful, some debris may have been turned into a home for aquatic animals, like a hermit crab in a soda can.

Make Responsible seafood choices

Many fish species are endangered or have gone extinct due to overfishing and destructive fishing practices. If you must eat seafood, be sure it’s from a sustainable fishery. While I like shrimp and lobster, I almost never eat them. Often, shrimp are collected by dredging the ocean floor, picking up everything and scraping the bottom clean. This destroys habitat and collects a lot of by-catch (non-target fish) which are often dumped. Lobster are often harvested by lobster divers in Central America. These divers dive at great risk to themselves to provide income for their families. Unfortunately, many divers often pay the price with Decompression Illness, resulting in paralysis and other maladies.

Take Action

Take a stand. Tell your elected representatives that you support strong legislation supporting marine parks, marine protected areas, sustainable fisheries and to protect our ocean planet. I’ve often written my elected officials on these topics, as well as signing many petitions to the same ends. What have you done?

Be an eco-tourist

Plan your dive trips accordingly. Choose resort and dive operations that actively protect the aquatic world. One of my favorite dive operations is Octopus Dive School at the Blue Bahia Resort on Roatan. The resort does a great job, including going the extra mile in making sure that sewage is treated properly and reducing their energy usage. Octopus Dive School actively supports the Roatan Marine Park and uses mooring buoys rather than dropping anchor on the sensitive reef.

Shrink your Carbon Footprint

What can you do at home? Start with the simple things: when you leave the room, turn off the lights. Make sure you’ve energy efficient appliances and lighting. Use reusable shopping bags rather than getting plastic bags at the grocery store. While that might be unavoidable sometimes, reuse or recycle the bags if you must use them. I’ve installed compact fluorescent lights or LED lights in most of my household light fixtures. They last longer and don’t use as much electricity. And don’t forget to turn off your computer or at least make sure it is in sleep mode. Low power on my computer still consumes about 25 watts. In sleep mode, nearly zero.

Give Back

Ocean conservation groups rely on donations and contributions to help make a difference. You can make direct donations to organizations like Project AWARE or you can do simple things like shopping at Amazon.com through the Amazon Smile program. For every purchase, Amazon donates to Project AWARE. I shop a lot at Amazon.com, and the Amazon Smile program helps me help Project AWARE.

So, what are you doing to help the aquatic world? Do you part for Earth Day and take the 10 Tips Pledge to follow the 10 Tips and protect the aquatic world!

Peak Performance Buoyancy

Buoyancy control. You learned the basics in Open Water Diver, but how long ago was that? Have you practiced recently? Some of the most experienced divers I know still use the first dive or two on a dive trip to fine-tune their buoyancy control.

Learn about proper weighting and trim in Peak Performance Buoyancy

Why is buoyancy control so important? For several reasons.

• To keep from hitting sensitive aquatic life or stirring up the bottom
• To make diving as effortless as possible
• To reduce how much air you use and extend your bottom time.
• To allow you to participate in other specialty diving activities such as photography and videography with threatening the sensitive aquatic life.
• To help streamline your profile in the water

One of the top ten things you can do to protect the aquatic world while diving is to become a buoyancy master. The Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty course guides you through ways to perfect your buoyancy control. You can try to figure it all out on your own, or you can take the fast track with professional guidance.

Good buoyancy control starts with proper weighting. Proper weighting varies based on you and your scuba kit. For example, if you’re diving a 95cf steel tank, you may not need as much lead in your weight system compared to using an 80cf aluminum tank, even though they look similar in size. Your dive environment and exposure protection play a big part in your weighting, too. Diving warm tropical waters with just your swimsuit or a shorty wetsuit might require only a few pounds of weight. Diving the colder waters of the Pacific Northwest, though, with a drysuit and heavy undergarments might require 25+ pounds of weight. Regardless, you’ll learn how to estimate how much weight you need and then how to test if it is enough with a buoyancy check.

If you’re diving colder waters and have a lot of weight, you may want to split up the weight between different weight systems. For example, you could put fifteen pounds in an integrated weight system in your BCD and combine that with ten pounds on a belt. You’ll learn about weight systems and how to use them to balance the weight you’re carrying.

Weighting is important, but distribution of that weight can dictate your position in the water. For most diving, you often want to be in a prone position, laying horizontal, face-down so you can see what’s below you. Other times, you may want to be vertical, such as on a wall dive. How you distribute weight changes your position in the water. If you weight yourself to be vertical, but really want to be horizontal, you may spend your dive working hard to maintain position. You’ll learn how to use trim weights and where to position them. For safety, though, you will want to make sure you can ditch at least part of your weight. The great news is that if you split the weight between systems, you’ll only need to ditch one system to gain buoyancy rather than dropping it all.

Okay, you got into scuba because it was fun. Peak Performance Buoyancy also integrates some workshops and games to help you practice and tune your buoyancy control. It’s not all lecture; we play games, too.

Peak Performance buoyancy requires two open water dives. On those dives, you’ll practice what you learned in class and in confined water, adjusting your trim and practicing hovering and how to approach things underwater without crashing into them.

Make yourself a better diver and help protect our delicate aquatic resources. Become a Buoyancy Master with the PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty; one of the ten things you can do as a diver to protect our ocean planet.

Shark Conservation

Sharks are amazing creatures. Unfortunately, they have earned a bad reputation. Sharks rarely attack humans. When attacks have occurred, they are most likely due to the shark confusing the human as food. Movies have portrayed sharks as man killers, but you’re much more likely to be killed by a deer or cow than a shark.

Sharks are apex predators. They keep the oceans healthy by removing sick aquatic animals and keeping fish populations under control. Shark Conservation is essential for ocean sustainability.

Why do sharks seem so menacing? Probably because they have a rather grim appearance and have a somewhat blank appearance. Think about it: sharks are one of the oldest known families of animals. They’ve not changed much and relative to the ‘cute’ and mostly harmless fish you might have in a home aquarium, they are predators. [Keep in mind that many fish in home aquariums can sting or bite, but they are treated as pets.]

Sharks aren’t just a predator, they are an apex predator for the oceans. That means they sit at the top of the food chain or food web. The only predator they should worry about is man. Apex predators, whether in the sea or on land, play a key role in keeping ecosystems in balance and keeping them healthy. How does that work? Apex predators keep other predators in check, often making sure that other predators don’t overwhelm and destroy or disrupt an ecosystem. Apex predators also remove sick animals from the ecosystem, which helps curb the spread of disease.

Sharks are incredibly vulnerable. Okay, I just said they were an apex predator. How can they be vulnerable? Unlike many fish species that spawn in huge numbers, sharks live a long time. They mature later in life and they don’t breed in the numbers that fish lower down in the food web do. When juvenile sharks are killed before reaching maturity and spawning, they numbers of sharks start to dwindle. Some shark species are threatened by extinction due to overfishing and fishing practices that catch sharks as bycatch. Sharks have been overfished for their fins, to make shark fin soup, a delicacy in Asia. Many restaurants have stopped making shark fin soup because of public pressure to stop the process of shark finning. When sharks are caught for their fins, they are brought onto the boat, their fins are cut off and the shark is dropped back in the water to die. A grisly and wasteful approach to fishing.  Shark Conservation through your help as a diver is essential.

Sharks are also threatened by public or government overreaction. A recent shark attack in Australian waters resulted in the government calling for a shark cull: basically catching and killing sharks in the area. As it was, the person attacked was probably in waters known to have sharks and the person probably appeared as food to the shark.  As a diver and member of the public, tell your elected officials that Shark Conservation is a priority and they should focus on the science not their unjustified fear of sharks.

Taking the Shark Conservation Distinctive Specialty course will enhance your knowledge of sharks and their behavior. You’ll learn more details of how they are threatened and learn ways you can help conserve sharks and promote marine health by keeping these apex predators. You’ll make two dives with your instructor. If you’re lucking enough to see sharks, you’ll passively observe their behavior. If not, you’ll look at ways that the sharks may be threatened in that environment.

As divers, we’re natural ambassadors and advocates for aquatic life. Do your part to help conserve sharks for aquatic health and future generations of divers: sign up for the Shark Conservation Specialty today.

Learn more about Sharks in Peril at projectaware.org