[Coral-List] Reef tourism: Muck Diving

Tue Jun 6 10:19:55 EDT 2017

I dove there as well for about a week a couple of years ago, shooting
images for the XL Catlin Seaview Survey. In covering about ten linear
kilometres (we use a dive propulsion vehicle), I saw in some spots more
garbage piled up underwater than I have ever seen before or since. I think
the terrestrial supply of garbage is pretty large, but probably not
different than other places in Indonesia with similar populations. What
seemed different there was that the strong currents in the Strait seemed to
be concentrating it in certain areas, forming windrows appearing tens of
centimetres deep. It made me a believer that submerged, benthic
anthropogenic household garbage accumulation can be great enough to cover
and physically choke out large areas of the bottom, something I had not
before believed  was really possible.

We also saw evidence of ongoing poison fishing in the area, on Lembeh
Island close to Bitung. I came away thinking this was a dive area well past
the curve of onset of significant human impact, and likely headed for a
condition where the reef would no longer support dive tourism. It is
interesting that it seems that overdevelopment is not possible to control
by top-down planning methods, nor is it controlled by bottom-up market
forces, even well after that development has put an area on the path to
visible, tangible deterioration (sensu G. Hardin). Not encouraging.

Ben Neal

On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 8:31 PM, Maarten De Brauwer <
maarten.debrauwer at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi John,
> diving in Lembeh has indeed changed over the years, there's now 13 resorts
> I am aware of, and at least 1 new one being built at the moment. Diver
> numbers have increased as well and the informal joint management that used
> to be done by the dive operators seems to be less efficient  with new
> players entering the field. Overcrowding of sites and diver behaviour are
> definitely issues that should be addressed.
>
> About the quantity and quality of critters: about 3 months ago a large
> flood in the area (washing away roads and causing lots of other damage)
> washed a very large volume of sediment, debris and garbage in the strait.
> Conditions were that bad that diving was impossible for nearly a week. This
> seems to have caused a massive decline in both diversity and abundance of
> "critters". By now it is slowly recovering, but it just shows how little we
> know about this area and which are the major threats for this area.
>
> Cheers,
> Maarten
>
>
> 2017-06-06 3:43 GMT+08:00 John Ware <jware at erols.com>:
>
> > Hello to Mark and List,
> >
> > My wife and I have been diving the "muck diving capital of the world"
> > (Lembeh Straits, Indonesia) for ~10 years.  In fact, we were there ~2
> weeks
> > ago.
> >
> > Things have changed.  Where there were once 2 or 3 dive 'resorts' there
> > are now at least 10.  Where we would never seen another boat at a dive
> > site, sometimes there were three or four linked together.
> >
> > In addition, the quality of the divers we saw from some of these newly
> > established resorts was horrendous.  The place we stay never has more
> than
> > 4 divers to a guide and usually only two.  But we saw groups of 12 - 15
> all
> > mugging the same octopus (and each other ) at the same time.
> >
> > Also, the quality and quantity of those little known creatures seems to
> > have declined markedly since our last trip 4 years ago.
> >
> > I know this is the coral list and it's not coral reefs, but may be of
> > interest anyway.
> >
> > John
> > --
> >
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-- 

*Benjamin P NealPostdoctoral Research ScientistBigelow Laboratory for Ocean
Sciences60 Bigelow Drive, P.O. Box 380East Boothbay, Maine 04544  *
*Office: 1-207-315-2567 x413*