Project 2 Final Project

My family decided to vacation in the Turks and Caicos at a resort where diving was included. I was ten years old and the resort was beautiful and on the ocean. I remember clearly the summer day in the middle of July when I first was allowed to put on scuba gear in the pool to see how I would do with the instructions. Both my parents were certified and It sounded like the perfect thing to do. Why not get resort certified in one of the most beautiful places on Earth to scuba dive. I passed the first stage and was allowed to go on the boat and dive. The reefs were bright and colorful and there were fish I had never seen before everywhere. Resort certification allows you only to dive in the resorts and is not usable in the states. But, I was hooked and as soon as I turned twelve years I took a course and received my junior level scuba certification. This was the beginning of my love and connection to the ocean and the scuba world.

Many years later while studying about this topic in my environmental class I learned that the oceans and the reefs around the world were starting to die. Overfishing, coral bleaching, and global warming are all factors contributing to this terrible thing. Prior to this class I never fully understood what all of these terms were and how it is affecting our reefs. I never realized that these man made problems were impacting coral reefs and if they were, it was only minimal damage which you wouldn’t be able to really observe that is was occurring. I was able to interview two fellow divers so they could give me their thoughts on what was and is happening to the local coral reefs.

The two divers that I interviewed are very different but both have been scuba diving longer than I have been alive. They saw the reefs when they were flourishing with life and scuba diving was not as popular as it is now. I interviewed them separately and asked them both the same questions. The results were interesting. I began the interview with questions about how the reefs looked when they first began diving. I got different answers but with basically the same context. Thirty years ago, the reefs were thriving and covered with plants and fish. Then I asked them some questions about what got them interested in scuba diving. These questions differed a bit. Jeff was more interested in the ocean as a whole and fishes more than he dives. He grew up in South Florida and wanted to go out and explore it since he was a young boy. He had his first boat when he was 13 and used it is local canals. As for John he is more of an adrenaline junkie and wanted to try something new and different. Although these two dive for different reasons they still both appreciate what is available to them in the form of coral reefs. I continued with a few more questions but the one that was key to this research project was when I asked if they thought that the reefs had changed over the last thirty years that they had been diving. This is where the interview changed and got very interesting. They both told of how the oceans had looked very colorful and there were many different varieties of coral flourishing all over the ocean floor. They both discussed how slowly different species of fish started dwindling in size and some of the coral wasn’t as bright as it used to be. Jeff talked about how over the last few years he started seeing litter and fishing lines all tangled up in the reefs. John, is an avid hunter for lobster and talked about how the reefs used to be full of them and now he is lucky if he even gets a few on any dive. So, with this information I now had the path of where I will go with my research. I want to know what other people of my similar interests experience on the same dives I do and how likely it is for it to all occur over and over again of experiencing the same thing. Scuba diving has a lot to offer and I was surprised by what I found.

My first bit of research confirmed that the colors of the reefs were changing and had indeed changed due to a phenomenon called coral bleaching. As described by the authors in a PLOS academic journal, “Coral bleaching is defined as the loss of pigment from algal symbionts. It has recently become a major issue with the increase of global warming and naturally warmer waters.” (Welle 2). In common terms, this means that the algae that is banded with the coral can only grow and stay healthy at a certain temperature. Once the water temperature rises just a few degrees, the algae leave the coral making it lose it pigment or coloring. There is no way for it to gain this pigment back and regain its color. Once this has happened the coral will eventually die. As with all living organisms there is no reversing the death or a coral.

Once I began to understand the symbiotic relationship between algae and the coral I started to wonder about the coral reefs in my own backyard, was this what was happening to our local coral. In a Palm Beach Post article talking about the effects of coral bleaching it stated that, “Coral reefs spanning from The Keys to Palm Beach have been hit with the worst coral bleaching incident in two decades. Coral off the coast of Broward County have which have survived 200 to 300 years are starting to feel the effects.” (Flesher). In looking at a map of South Florida I learned that the span referenced in the article, The Florida Keys to Palm Beach County is very large. The article was talking about over 200 miles of coral reefs which had experienced some type of coral bleaching. That is a lot of reef that thousands of people dive weekly. It is hard to imagine that these reefs which have survived for 200 or 300 years old were dying because of a man made problem of changes in the climate. These same reefs have lived practically unharmed for this long period of time but now were feeling the effects of the coral bleaching and something needed to change quickly or all would be lost forever.

There are many factors that are causing the deaths of the coral reefs beyond coral bleaching. In researching I learned that overfishing is causing major destruction to the reefs as well. It would seem that overfishing would be harmless to the coral reefs and would be more of an issue regarding the fish population than it would the coral population. There are two types of fisherman, recreational and commercial. Recreational fishing would be your weekend warriors who fish whenever possible using a rod and reel. Your commercial fisherman are those who earn a living fishing. The tools they use are large nets and lines that could span for up to a mile. This is where the problem begins for the coral reef. According to the NOAA, “Traps set to close to reefs and marine debris, such as ghost trap nets, monofilament, and lines can damage coral reefs, which take a long time to recover.” (NOAA National Ocean Service). Ghost trap nets are nets that are no longer usable and thrown overboard by fisherman. These nets trap sea life into them eventually killing them. The nets settle on the ocean floor often entangling the coral and causing stress which ultimately results in it breaking and dying. Monofilament is the actual line that fisherman use when fishing. Unfortunately, this line is often thrown into the ocean and has the same effect as the ghost nets had on the coral reefs.

Narcosis Dive Charters maintains a website where they have dive logs of everyday that the charter boat goes out with divers. The logs give a brief description of what the day what like, what the divers saw, and what specific reefs they dove that day. What was really neat about this site was it is a Palm Beach based diving charter. On the date given which was July 11, 2017, they reported, “Spectacular dives. Blue water is back. Goliaths starting to trickle in plus sea turtles and lemon sharks are being spotted.” This specific dive log was for two reefs that I dive regularly. I’ll be the first to tell you I’ve never seen sharks on this reef, but their logs showed that a lemon shark was spotted. The log also talked about how blue water is back which means divers at the beginning of the week did not have good visibility, and it was a relief to finally get back that crystal-clear water. These dive logs are a good example of how each and every dive is unique. You can compare dives on the same reef over two days and it will not look the same. This is part of why people like to dive, it is truly unknown or unpredictable of what you will see.

Once a scuba hits the water and starts to descend you don’t know what you will experience or what sea creatures you will encounter. You could be doing a 40-foot coral reef dive, or an 80 foot ledge dive where the main landscape is rocky ledges or just a flat reef with many holes. You could have visibility top to bottom in crystal blue waters, or you could have green murky water where you can only see five feet in front of you. All divers want to dive in crystal blue waters where everything is visible but you do have those days where you get to the bottom of the ocean and it isn’t clear but you just have to push through.

During my interview with Jeff, he went on to tell me a personal story that happened this year only a couple days before the interview. “While diving on a reef which Is off the coast of Palm Beach, I had a black tip shark swim right up to us, which has never happened before, and was the first shark I’ve ever seen on that reef.” (Eassa). After being told what reef this was I was in shock. I have done at least 50 dives on this particular reef and have never once seen a shark swim by us. Again, it’s truly one of the reasons people dive, you are never sure what you’re going to experience that day. It’s a different view every day at the bottom of the ocean.

So, the average person who visits a local beach, and possibly goes into the ocean for a swim may never see a coral reef so the loss for them will be minimal, but for me the possibility of losing even one reef is always there in the back of my mind. If we the community who loves the ocean, whether you fish, snorkel or dive, don’t do something soon these beautiful reefs won’t be here much longer. There will be generations of children who will need to look at pictures or videos to see the beauty of the coral reef. For those of us who are avid divers a major part of our lifestyle will be gone forever. All that will be left for us, will be our logs, our photos and our stories of what we saw and conquered. As Wayne Gretsky said,” You will miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” therefore I am dedicated to do my part to save the reefs, because that’s my shot to make a difference. Try something new, you could actually like it.

Works Cited

Welle, Paul D., et al. “Estimating the Effect of Multiple Environmental Stressors on Coral Bleaching and Mortality.” Plos One, vol. 12, no. 5, Apr. 2017. Academic Search Complete, EBSCO, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0175018. Accessed 16 July 2017

Fleshler, David. “Corals off South Florida Hit with Severe Bleaching.” Sun-Sentinel.com, 28 Sept. 2015, www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm-beach/fl-coral-bleaching-20150928-story.html. Accessed 16 July 2017

US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “How Does Overfishing Threaten Coral Reefs?” NOAA's National Ocean Service, 23 June 2016, oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral-overfishing.html. Accessed 17 July 2017.

Eassa, Jeffrey. Personal Interview. 14 July, 2016.

“Dive Log.” Narcosis Dive Company, narcosisdive.com/divelog.php. Accessed 19 July 2017.

Yap, Helen T. “A Perilous Future for Coral Reefs.” Conservation Biology, vol. 25, no. 1, 2011, pp. 205–206. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27976445

Schoeman, Kiera, et al. “The Perceived Value of a Scuba Diving Experience.” Journal of Coastal Research, vol. 32, no. 5, 2016, pp. 1071–1080. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43893620