Please pass this information on to your diving friends!

We invite you to print out the following guidelines for your personal use, or to pass along to diving friends, dive clubs, or dive shops. These guidelines may be reprinted and distributed, with just the following restrictions: all reprints must display the copyright notice, © by Christopher Newbert, and the source, from http://www.rstours.com. Secondly, these guidelines must be made available free of charge, and not contained in or used as part of any item for sale. Thanks for helping us Save the Reef!

Save the Reef

The ocean has been a life source for mankind since the dawn of history. She feeds us now as she has fed our ancestors through the ages. She has served as the main thoroughfare for world commerce, carrying people, goods and indeed entire societies to all corners of the globe. She is the weather generator for our planet, a wellspring of inspiration in art and literature, and an endless source of recreation for people the world over.

The last twenty years have taken a terrible toll on this precious, once splendid resource. We have only ourselves to blame for much of this tragedy. Our children and grandchildren may never get to experience the exhilaration of drifting down the face of a pristine coral wall. They may never know the sensation of being surrounded by dancing schools of brilliantly colored reef fish, the gentle face of a manatee, or gliding weightless through lush coral canyons.

Remember, all it takes is care.

But helping to heal the ocean doesn't necessarily require money, donations, or volunteer time. It doesn't require anything that we all don't already have in our hearts. Here is what it takes: Care.

To help you join in this effort, I have compiled the following guidelines concerning diving habits, diving skills, underwater photography techniques, diving equipment suggestions, dive boat anchoring practices, and marine life interaction which, when followed, can help you show the care you feel for the reef environment, eliminating nearly all coral breakage caused by we divers, and initiating a more enlightened approach to our relationship with marine wildlife. These are small steps indeed, but the cumulative effect on preserving the reefs we visit can be very large. Of equal importance is the example we set.

1.  Avoid over-weighting.

An area of primary concern is a diver's buoyancy control. Unfortunately, the advent of the BCD has led to a widespread ignorance of proper buoyancy control. Certain instructors have found it more expedient to generally overweight their students, "just to get them down", and compensate for the excess weight by pumping ample air into the BCD with an auto-inflator.

So what? What difference does it make? The answer is, lots. If you are over weighted, the air you must put in your BCD causes you to swim in a head-high, legs- down position, as the weight belt pulls your lower body down, while the BCD lifts your upper body. As you swim along the reef, your fins therefore are forced lower in the water, and they will churn up the coral. What's the solution? Do what the pros do. Use only the exact amount of weight you need. This will allow you to swim effortlessly in a more horizontal attitude. Your diving enjoyment will be vastly increased. You will feel suddenly light and free, like you thought diving was supposed to be. But more importantly, your fins will float higher off the reef, and you will be much less likely to smash coral when you kick.

2.  Don't use ankle weights!!

O.K., drysuit diving is a legitimate exception to this rule. Ankle weights for drysuit divers can be a safety consideration. But drysuits are not in widespread use on tropical coral reefs where delicate corals are being pulverized daily by careless divers. Ankle weights are simply uncalled for with divers wearing wetsuits. Like the over weighting problem sighted above, they force your feet down by design, thus increasing the likelihood that your fins will smash fragile coral as you kick. Proper weighting and correct position of weight belt and tank will eliminate any misguided need for ankle weights.

3.  Use correct weight belt position.

And where is that, you may ask? Well, it varies. Think of this: your weight belt is a sliding balance weight, and you are the balance beam. As you slide your weight belt higher on your waist, you will swim with your feet elevated when in a horizontal position. As you lower the weight belt toward your hips, you will force your feet and fins lower in the water. Find the exact right position, and you will have found the key to freedom in this weightless environment. Yes, the weight belt needs to be readjusted from time to time underwater, as it will move around. This is quick and easy to do. You just have to be aware that you have this nifty control over your swimming attitude through the water. The weight belt position will change as well, depending on your circumstances. Are you carrying a camera, for instance? The added weight extending forward may require you to slide your weight belt down a bit. The point is, remember you have this option, and use it.

Most divers prefer to wear the bulk of their weight on their front side, as this will counterbalance their tank and decrease their tendency to roll over. The more in control you are of your body underwater, the less likely you will be to thrash about with hands or fins trying to gain control. The less damage you will do.

4.  Use your tank position in the back pack as a balance weight.

This is almost universally overlooked by divers. The position of your tank in your back pack plays perhaps the most significant role in your swimming position underwater. Raise your back pack higher on your tank, and you will lower your legs. Lower the back pack on the tank, and your legs will rise. Your goal is to find the exact right position for you, such that you can swim comfortably, horizontally, with your fins well off the coral, without a lot of compensating with your weight belt position, BCD etc. You will gain the joy of fluid freedom underwater. You will also know that you are much less likely to destroy the reef during your underwater explorations. This is no small satisfaction.

5.  Watch for buoyancy changes during a dive trip.

At the start of a trip, you are particularly excited. You are also perhaps a bit out of shape, as you may not have been diving for several months, and you probably have jet lag if you have traveled to an exotic tropical destination. As a result, your breathing will initially be heavier than normal. You will need more weight during the first couple of days to compensate for this. But watch! After a day or two, you will probably be back in stride. The equipment will no longer seem so foreign to you. You will have caught up on your sleep. You'll feel like you were born to dive. You may also notice that your air is lasting longer, that you are generally more relaxed. Well, you are also taking smaller lung-fulls with each breath. Less air in your lungs requires less weight to compensate. In addition, cumulative wet suit compression during a trip will cause even the finest suits to permanently lose thickness and, thus, buoyancy.

Therefore, always check your buoyancy at the end of your dives as your dive trip progresses. You probably will find that you are able to shed several pounds of excess lead in the first few days alone. In addition to all the other benefits to your personal enjoyment and to the preservation of the reef, the less dead, unnecessary weight you carry around, the less air you will use during your dive. Your bottom times will get extended and you'll get more out of your diving vacation. Fewer broken pieces of coral are the benefits that everyone will share from your caring.

6.  Remain extra careful about buoyancy loss at depth.

This is basic scuba 101. As you go deeper, your wetsuit compresses. You lose buoyancy. You have been instructed to add air to your BCD to compensate for this buoyancy loss. Yet many divers, perhaps in the awe and excitement of descending on a spectacular undersea coral covered wall somehow overlook this basic training. A touch of narcosis exacerbates the problem. As they go to ascend, they begin kicking madly to overcome their over-weighted condition. It is the reef which suffers.

As it turns out, much of the larger, more spectacular coral growth thrives in deeper water. Reduced sunlight often causes sea fans to reach enormous proportions. Protected by depth from the destructive surges of storm driven waves, coral growth attains spectacular but unbalanced forms in this weightless environment. A careless diver at depth, ignoring good training and buoyancy control techniques, can reek havoc on coral structures which took decades to grow... with a single heartbreaking kick of their fins. The answer is simple. Use your BCD at all times to maintain a neutrally buoyant condition, and be especially vigilant in deeper water.

7.  Remember that carrying a camera will alter your buoyancy.

Most well designed underwater camera rigs are slightly negative underwater. On the other hand, most underwater camera rigs are not well designed. Many systems become quite heavy after strobes, strobe arms, mounting trays, light meters, coffee pots and the kitchen sink have been screwed, bolted or welded together along with the camera to form an underwater camera system. You will need less weight when carrying such a system.

If you have several different camera systems, take note of the different buoyancy requirements of each rig. If you take more than one camera system underwater at one time, and are in the habit of laying your spare camera on the reef, be sure to avoid placing the camera anywhere where reef life and coral may be harmed. Even on the lushest of reefs, there are plenty of suitable bare spots if you look around.

8.  Avoid full leg kicks when working close to the bottom.

A strong scissors kick may well be what your instructor taught as the proper way to propel yourself underwater. In open water, or when swimming well above the reef, this is indeed a fine method of kicking. But when swimming low and close to the coral, big scissors kicks can spell senseless coral destruction. By using a special "bent knee" kick (a kind of modified bicycle kick), the feet and fins are raised high off the coral, and the chances of breaking coral are greatly reduced. This technique requires a kick generated by the lower leg, from the knee. The upper leg is relatively motionless. For particularly delicate situations, a special "ankle" kick can be employed. In this case, only the ankles and fins are used, sometimes in an up and down fashion, in other cases in kind of a rotating, sculling manner. This is not a kick for power or speed, but it is highly effective when working very close to delicate coral. The diver's legs barely move at all. Furthermore, there is very little force behind each fin movement. Even if something is kicked, the likelihood of reef damage is minimized.

9.  When you inadvertently kick something, stop kicking!

When you inadvertently kick something, stop kicking! It sounds so obvious, but how many times have we seen divers crash something with their fins, only to kick harder, more frantically, to distance themselves from the offending object. Well, all too often, the object being kicked is beautiful coral, and it is left smashed and dying as the careless diver swims off. Instead, if your fins knock into something by accident, stop kicking immediately, relax your legs, turn around and see what you've hit. If necessary, draw your legs up to your body, and push off with your hand (taking care what you touch), add air to your B.C., or scull with your hands until you have gained clearance from the reef and can safely begin kicking once again.

10.  Be extra careful when swimming in strong currents.

Everyone knows that current will normally be less strong closer to the bottom. The natural terrain of the reef serves to break up the flow and reduce the force of moving water. Many divers, therefore, will hug the bottom in strong current conditions. At the same time, current requires stronger kicks, and this combination does not bode well for the reef. However, by intelligently selecting handholds on the reef, divers can effortlessly cover great distances in strong currents, without ever kicking their fins at all. But this must be done sensibly! One cannot grab a beautiful soft coral, or a branching sea fan and expect to avoid reef damage! There are always plenty of sturdy rocks and such, which will not be harmed by a divers hand. Furthermore, one can see what they grasp with their hands. Whereas, fins thrash blindly behind the diver, often with tragic results.

With the hand-hold technique, a diver can rest between forward pulls without kicking one bit, all the while studying the reef ahead for suitable non-living, sturdy hand holds. The fact is, in most cases one does not even need to actually grasp an object. In all except the very strongest of currents, a diver can cover great distances effortlessly using a single extended finger, placed in small depressions or cracks between rocks. The reef impact of this technique is essentially zero. This is not recommended as a general means of locomotion. It is certainly best never to touch the reef at all. This is only for bad currents, and represents, realistically, the lesser of two evils. If you have seen a diver knock over a 6 foot diameter table coral while kicking in a difficult current, this approach will make immediate sense.

11.  Photographers must take extra care!

In the process of documenting our precious marine environment, photographers need to be reminded that the reef is more valuable than their photographs, than anyone's photographs. Unfortunately, photographers are guilty of extensive reef damage, yet we are the one's who should be most sensitive to this. Pulverizing the reef for the sake of a picture cannot be tolerated. Unfortunately, as photographers concentrate on their pictures, they can lose track of their flippers. They cannot see their fins, and their fins do not have nerve endings. In trying to get that once-in-a-lifetime photo, they all too often destroy coral which will not regenerate in anyone's lifetime. There are ways to minimize, if not eliminate this damage, however.

Finally, all photographers should note that there are pictures underwater that were never meant to be taken. The surrounding reef might be so delicate as to not allow a photographer to make the shot without inflicting damage. So pass it by! It just isn't worth it! You will never enjoy the photograph anyhow if in your heart of hearts you know you wrecked the reef to obtain it. We pass up pictures all the time, yet we make our living with underwater photography, so pictures probably mean more to us than the guy off the street. If we can't portray the beauty of what we love without killing it, it just isn't worth it.

12.   Leaving a photo site is very critical.

Many photographers inflict their worst damage after they have taken their photographs. The last shot having been made, they beat their fins a mile a minute to move off for their next photograph. Weighted down with a camera and possibly negatively buoyant, having let air out of their BCD to stabilize themselves on the reef, they resemble gooney birds trying to take off downwind. But the results are so sad, as they leave a swath of destruction in their wake. On the other hand, this is easily avoided. After finishing your shots, simply turn and look at your fins. If they are free and clear of the bottom, it is okay to begin kicking. But if they are not clear, you must determine how you will move away from the site without harm. Often a gentle push with one's hand (placed on a rock or similar object, of course) will give one enough clearance to begin harmlessly kicking away. On the other hand, it may be necessary to give a few shots of air into your BCD in order to "elevate" off the reef, before it is safe to kick.

Another good technique is to draw ones legs up into ones body until they are clear of the reef, then begin the easy "ankle" kicks described earlier, to gain clearance from the reef. The legs can be gradually extended once distance is gained from the reef. Finally, controlled hand sculling can be used, and this is very effective. No, it doesn't look good. Neither do ankle kicks. But the reef sure looks good after you leave. You can see your hands, so you can easily avoid whacking things because your hands are in front of you. What's more, hands don't have long rubber extensions attached to them, tripling the force of the thrust. If you hit something accidentally, it will likely be a low impact blow.

13.   Avoid overlarge, cumbersome camera rigs.

A proper camera system should be just slightly negative. If overly negative, the diver is destabilized underwater when holding the camera in front of their body while in the horizontal position. The diver will need to compensate for the negative weight by putting excess air in their BCD, and their swimming position is poorly affected. If one uses a camera system with very long strobe arms as many do, the arms should be easily foldable, so that when the diver is swimming amongst delicate, tight surroundings the arms can be folded in, avoiding damage. The camera profile can also be reduced when swimming in strong currents, thereby requiring less powerful kicking. Such flexibility in strobe arms will allow these arms to be safely positioned when working in tight quarters..

14.  Avoid using multiple camera rigs.

You've seen them, of course. They look like escapees from a NASA experimental space station lab. Camera rigs with two, three, yes, I've even seen four cameras mounted together. Triple I-beam construction, cross member supporting trusses, cantilevered accessory platforms, booster rockets. It makes you proud to be an American!  Except the resultant systems are so horribly awkward, heavy and cumbersome, the photographer has little chance of doing any one thing right. Let's face it, you can't photograph everything and every situation on each dive. So why try? Better to concentrate on one type of shot, and realize that you will always miss numerous opportunities that your chosen system wouldn't accommodate. But I guarantee you will end up with better photographs. I've heard the arguments: "But what if a manta swims by and I have my macro lens", and so forth. Believe me on this! You will be able to focus your attention better with a single camera, rather than becoming a hyperactive photo monster chasing everything in sight, firing one camera after another like some kind of attack helicopter strafing the enemy. Relax. Enjoy the peace and introspection of a focused photographic experience. The reef will thank you too, as there can be no argument that a smaller, lighter rig will be easier for you to handle, and result in less broken coral and damaged habitat.

 15.  Use mounted strobes as opposed to hand held strobes.

When a diver uses one hand for a camera and one hand for a strobe, they have no hands left to hold the reef in an non-impact fashion, no way of stabilizing themselves with anything but their flapping fins. And those fins (I have watched this countless times), those fins just beat like hummingbird wings as the coral flies in every direction. Adding to the problem, some strobes are notoriously heavy underwater. Perched on the end of a strobe arm and extended by hand, this dead weight can seriously unbalance the photographer. Guaranteed this diver will use their fins to attempt to maintain position. The scars on the reef will be mute testimony years later to the problems associated with hand-holding strobes.

16.  Attach dangling gauges, computer consoles and octopus regulators.

Hanging down as they do when the diver swims across the reef, such pieces of equipment act like wrecking balls on the reef, chipping off bits of coral, knocking loose sponges, and catching at the most inopportune times, just as the photographer is about to get his award-winning shot. Give the reef a chance. Attach to your BCD all dangling pieces of equipment with Velcro, bungie cord loops, or whatever creative solutions you can devise. But don't continue to allow this oversight to further damage this priceless resource. Keep such gauges from dragging along the bottom. It does matter -- every little bit. Besides, your photography will improve, as you won't constantly have the irritation of your gauges snagging everything in sight. Your ability to quietly stalk your photographic subjects will vastly improve! If you wonder how the pros can get so close to the animals they photograph, well, here's one great hint I've used effectively for years.

17.  Never drop boat anchors onto a coral reef.

I don't know which does more damage, boat anchors, or the anchor chain. But the verdict is clear. Anchors and anchor chains do shocking, long-term damage to coral reefs. Pray the wind doesn't shift once a boat is anchored in the coral. The boat will pivot around the anchor, and the anchor chain will sweep a sickening arc through the fragile reef. The results are devastating. The once thriving reef looks like a clear-cut forest. All heavily dived areas should utilize moorings. There is no excuse for dive operators throwing anchors on the same reefs that support them. In lieu of moorings, very often a boat can safely tie to a reef. This requires more work from the boat operator, and someone will have to go underwater to do it. But this way a rope can be attached to a low impact area, such as a large rock. The boat will be secure, the wind can shift all it wants, and the swinging vessel will do no damage.

Smaller skiffs can actually "hand place" anchors on the bottom. The anchor can be wedged amongst rocks, or otherwise secured where it will do no harm. Yes, this requires effort, but isn't it worth it?

18.  Boycott dive tour operators which do not follow reasonable anchoring policies.

That's right, hit 'em where it hurts, in the pocketbook. If you are on a dive charter where the dive boat tosses an anchor indiscriminately onto the reef, ask them why they do this. Ask them if they care about the environment that supports them. And don't give them anymore of your business! Spread the word about them to all your diving friends and dive club members. Believe me, money talks where intelligence may be lacking. If they do not care enough about our ocean environment to make the extra effort to anchor properly, they do not deserve to be in business. The reef is not their personal resource. It belongs to everyone. It belongs to the future.

19.  Remember, wildlife is wild.

You don't feed the bears in Yellowstone and you don't hand peanuts to the elephants in Africa. As the name suggests, wildlife is wild. To a large degree, this is a recognized and accepted fact when it comes to terrestrial wildlife. What is so different about marine wildlife?

Marine wildlife is wild, friends. Let's leave it that way. These animals are not carnival rides, they are not pets. Let's love them for what they are. But let's not try and make them something they aren't.

20.  Manipulation of animals to suit a photograph looks dumb.

So why do it? When is the last time you actually saw a starfish crawling up a soft coral tree? So why stick one there for a picture? Believe me, we don't need to improve upon mother nature. She has done quite a marvelous job without our attempts at redecoration. Take photos of animals in their natural state, with as little disturbance as possible. So the stonefish is pointed in the wrong direction for your picture? The temptation is there to tickle it with your dive knife, isn't it? Maybe it will turn around. Well, let it be. You'll get your shots, maybe not this time, but you'll get them. If you adopt a gentler approach to your diving and photographic practices, your pictures will definitely improve. They will become expressions of the love and reverence you feel for the sea, and a testimony to your commitment preserving the ocean for generations yet to come.

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