[Coral-List] Fw: Sustainable Coral Reef/Dive Operator Certification?

[Bastiaan Vermonden]

Hi Monika,

These are all very legitimate points and something I have also thought
about. This behaviour of hoping from destination to destination like
grasshoppers already happens sadly enough. However now destinations can
benefit for a long time from their reputations even though the reef quality
steadily degrades. With a quality indicator system consumers would
recognize that the reef is degrading much faster than is now the case.

Maybe one idea to better incorporate your concerns is to ensure that once
an area has been rated a number of times the trend is monitored. Then with
the extra data divers can be informed whether an area has gotten worse,
stayed the same or improved?

Also it seems marine parks can have big effects in what seems like an
acceptable time frame:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_ocnWW6hUs

To get to this effect however it  will be necessary to make investments.
However if we can get better at predicting how long it would take for the
fish/coral populations to recover and achieve a commercially interesting
quality (for diving/snorkeling) it might be possible to use the same
sources of funding as businesses use now, sources such as banks, bonds etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_ocnWW6hUs

Of course as a last option it might also be possible to not rate areas
where the management is considered to irresponsible to exploit the reefs.

Regards,

Bastiaan

By the way I am glad you are also enjoying this topic