[Coral-List] Help Us Understand the Beauty of Coral Reefs

[Douglas Fenner]

    I think Alina's final question is a good one.  A quick search in Google
Scholar on "effects of diving on coral reefs review" produced the following
references to review articles on this topic (I've just read abstracts, and
small parts of these):
A Review of SCUBA Diving Impacts and Implication for Coral Reefs
Conservation and Tourism Management
Siti Zulaiha Zainal Abidin and Badaruddin Mohamed
SHS Web of Conferences, 12 (2014) 01093

Sumanapala, D., Dimmock, K., & Wolf, I. D. (2022). A review of ecological
impacts from recreational SCUBA diving: Current evidence and future
practice. *Tourism and Hospitality Research*, *0*(0).

Vinicius J. Giglio, Osmar J. Luiz, Carlos E.L. Ferreira,
Ecological impacts and management strategies for recreational diving: A
review,
Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 256, 2020, 109949

Roche et al, 2016. Recreational diving impacts on coral reefs and the
adoption of environmentally responsible within the scuba diving industry.
Environmental Management 58: 107-116.

Roche cites 3 papers that reported less coral cover on more heavily dived
sites than on less dived sites.
Giglio cites 2 papers that reported "high levels" of reef damage at places
with intensive diving.

    I don't think all the world's coral reef diving impacts are the same as
Mark described from one spot in the Philippines.  My experience in Cozumel,
where diving has long been intense, was not like that at all.  Cozumel had
2000 dives per year on 15 miles of reef.  Some papers have recommended no
more than about 6000 dives a year, but that may be on a single dive site, I
haven't looked at the source papers to check that.  I haven't been back for
over 20 years, and I'm told that corals have declined there some and
sponges increased, but if that's all that has happened, it may be in better
shape than Florida and most of the Caribbean, judging by reports.  That
said, Cozumel had as a major advantage that the town and all the hotels
were well north of the reefs where the diving was, and the Yucatan current
moves briskly along the reefs going from south to north.  The sewage plant
I was told was well north of town, so that effluent was carried away from
the reefs.  The island is semi-consolidated carbonate sand, extremely
porous, there is no surface water, little soil, and no agriculture
so terrestrial sedimentation is not a problem.  The reefs are all protected
and it appeared that there was essentially no poaching, and those reefs
have some of the world's highest reef fish biomass in spite of not being so
remote that people can't get to them (but sharks are rare).  So Cozumel is
quite unusual.  I've commented before that Cozumel corals showed recovery
over time following Hurricane Gilbert, in spite of the fact that the reefs
had heavy diving traffic.  To me, that suggests that it is at least
POSSIBLE for diving to have a lower impact than hurricanes (the damage
Gilbert did to Cozumel's diving reefs was not very great, since waves on
the west side of Cozumel where the reefs are had limited space to build
(called "fetch") between there and the Yucatan Peninsula.  Gilbert's waves
were about 7 feet tall on the west shore of Cozumel and 40 feet high on the
east coast I was told.)

   Obviously, the effects of dive tourism are not just from the diving
itself, but can be from nutrients and sediments and fishing, and other
things.  If restaurants serve fresh reef fish, then even if they don't come
from the local reefs they come from reefs and the impact is just not on the
local reefs.  And the flights to get to remote reefs add to climate change
problems just as all tourism and business and family visit and other types
of flights do.

  How are popular dive locations that are heavily dived doing compared to
similar places which have light if any diving?  Trends would be most
useful, I would think, since diving is often most intense on some of the
best reef.  We can't always assume that a heavily dived reef and a lightly
dived reef started out the same before the diving, but trends can help us
figure it out.

Cheers, Doug

On Sun, May 28, 2023 at 4:06 AM Alina Szmant via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Hello Mark:
>
> In 1993 I helped Bob Ginsburg with the Global Aspects of corals Reefs:
> Health, Hazards and History colloquium he organized at the University of
> Miami.  Researchers came from all over and presented their case studies.
> On the 3rd day of the Colloquium there was a session about measures and
> policies that could be used to help save coral reefs and ecotourism was
> applauded by many as the solution for a number of reasons.  I clearly
> recall feeling alarmed at the prospect of millions of people flocking to
> thousands of hotels built along 100s of km of coral reef coastline and
> spoke out against the concept. Boy was I shot down. The economics of
> developing coral reef ecotourism to help all of the poor people living near
> coral reefs won the day!!! This was going to help prevent overfishing the
> nearby reefs because the locals would have have new ways of making a living
> rather than depending on coral reefs for food, barter goods and building
> materials.
>
>  How did that work out for coral reefs?????
>
>
>
> Dr. Alina M. Szmant,  CEO
> CISME Instruments LLC
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Mark Tupper via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
> Date: 5/27/23 5:05 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: Phillip Dustan <phil.dustan at gmail.com>
> Cc: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Help Us Understand the Beauty of Coral Reefs
>
> Phil, you hit it on the head. People are more likely to exploit what they
> love than protect it. Beautiful reefs, beaches, etc draw people like a
> magnet, leading to hotels, restaurants, dive shops, glass-bottom boat
> tours, increased fishing pressure to support said hotels and restaurants,
> sewage, plastic and other debris, and habitat destruction from coastal
> development.
>
> I watched this happen over a decade in Coron, Philippines. When I started
> surveys there in 2007, there were 3 hotels, a handful of tour operators,
> and maybe 30 cars on the island. By 2017, there were 53 hotels, several
> dozen tour operators, and about 3500 cars. The nearby reefs in Coron Bay
> that were stunning in 2007 were mostly trashed by 2017. I had to travel at
> least an hour to find healthy reefs with decent fish biomass.
>
> This same pattern is repeated globally. Coron is just one of many sites
> that has been "loved to death". Not to sound too flippant, but perhaps we
> should portray reefs as dangerous, nasty, scary places so people leave them
> alone.
>
> Mark
>
> On Sat, 27 May 2023, 12:02 Phillip Dustan via Coral-List, <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
>
> >  I Agree. I was a co-author on this paper. My photo time-series of
> > Carysfort Reef were used to help validate the algorithm.
> > https://biospherefoundation.org/project/coral-reef-change/
> >
> > However, there is a greater logical flaw in your thinking. For years the
> > mantra has been "People only protect what they love"
> > Cousteau popularized the idea and he always believed that it worked but I
> > think it is fair to say that the current state of affairs is that either
> > people do not love reefs or the idea is false.
> > Everyone treats coral reefs as a resource that provides goods and
> services
> > to humans when in fact reefs need all their productivity to maintain
> > themselves.
> > Reefs are living processes and that is what makes them beautiful to
> humans,
> > a healthy reef glows with life.
> > This can be quantified with image processing but that does not seem to
> add
> > to their conservation unfortunately.
> > Guess they need more than the perception of love to be allowed to exist
> in
> > the Anthropocene..........
> > Phil
> >
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