[Coral-List] Reef tourism: Muck Diving

[Maarten De Brauwer]

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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