The 68-year-old man was diving with a group in Protea Banks when he was killed by a shark. Photo / 123rf
An Austrian scuba diver who went missing off the coast of South Africa was killed by a shark, according to sea rescuers.
The 68-year-old man, who has yet to be formally identified, was diving with a group in Protea Banks in Durban, in the east of the country.
The National Sea Rescue Institute revealed he was with a charter who went out into the water at around 1.45pm on Wednesday, the Daily Mail reports.
His fellow divers said that he disappeared as the rest of the group made their way to the surface.
An NSRI spokesman said: “According to fellow divers on a charter scuba dive they had been surfacing when the man had disappeared.
“During the search‚ the remains of the body of the man‚ believed to have been bitten by a shark‚ were located by crew of a private fishing boat.
“The remains of the body were recovered from the water onto a sea rescue craft and brought to shore.
“NSRI Convey sincerest condolences to the family of a 68 year old Austrian man who died yesterday at Protea Banks, South Coast Kwa-Zulu Natal.”
Initially, the NSRI said the man was German but they today revealed that he was in fact Austrian and thanked both the Austrian and German Consulates who assisted.
Protea Banks is a reef just 6.4km off the South African coast and attracts thousands of scuba divers each year.
Diving enthusiasts typically travel to the area because of the large number of tiger and bull sharks which live there.
About 100 years ago, the general consensus was that sharks couldn’t kill people. Really: The historian Al Savolaine says scientists and doctors believed sharks’ jaws and teeth weren’t strong enough to break human bone.
Then came the summer of 1916.
Over the course of 12 days, there were six shark attacks along the New Jersey coast, and they contributed to a fear of sharks that has permeated our culture ever since.
Savolaine is a historian in one of the towns where there were attacks: Matawan, New Jersey. He says when the first attack happened, people thought it might have been perpetrated by a giant sea turtle.
That first attack happened on July 1, 1916, to a swimmer off Beach Haven, New Jersey. Just like in the movie that would build our shark obsession — 1975’s “Jaws” — officials “didn’t want to hurt local tourism, so they didn’t advertise it,” Savolaine said.
The series of attacks ended with another scene reminiscent of “Jaws,” except even more unlikely, because it took place in Matawan, which is 1.5 miles off the ocean. Savolaine says the shark swam up a tidal river and attacked one young boy in a group who were skinny dipping. The other boys ran naked through the town calling for help, and a group went down to the river to investigate.
Watson Stanley Fisher, 24, dove in, found the boy’s body, but then was attacked by the shark as well.
At the end of the 12-day streak, four people had died.
“This started the cultural fascination with shark attacks,” Savolaine said.
But after the attacks, interest in sharks eventually waned.
“Time passes and people get less concerned,” he said. “What really got people interested was the novel “Jaws” and the movie the following year. After that, a lot of people were afraid to go out in the ocean. And that got people thinking about sharks, so then they remembered that brutal shark attack in 1916 along the Jersey Shore. People started looking back and researching and it stimulated interest.”
Universal Pictures/Getty Images
It’s an interest that has held steady ever since. Rationally, however, the fear of sharks makes little sense, says David Ropeik, an expert on risk analysis and Harvard professor. He likes to point out that more people are attacked by cows than sharks.
“We take daily risks all the time, we cross the street, we use a cellphone when we drive, we have unprotected sex,” he said. “Our brain doesn’t even do a risk analysis, you just think, ‘Oh that won’t happen to me.’ You don’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘I’ll fall out of bed and hit my head.’”
That’s what Ropeik calls “optimism bias,” where the risk is far off in the distance and “we tell ourselves if we think about it at all, that won’t happen to me.”
But shark attacks don’t usually fall under the “optimism bias” category, he said. Maybe when someone first books a beach vacation, he isn’t thinking a shark attack could happen. But once he’s standing in the sand, ready to set foot in the water, “optimism bias changes to something called loss aversion, where we over weigh the downside of possibilities,” Ropeik said.
“It’s easy to be optimistic when it’s off in the future, but now your butt is on the line, now you could die, and we revert to caution,” he said. “I know I probably won’t get eaten by shark, but it would be really bad if I do, so statistics go out the window.”
Other factors that play into our irrational fear of sharks are that we dread the pain and suffering that would come with dying by a shark attack.
“The more pain and suffering along the way to getting to being dead, the scarier it is,” he said. And there’s the lack of control we feel over when a shark might strike.
“You’re on the surface of the water and it’s dark under there, you can’t see, and not knowing is powerlessness,” Ropeik said. Even if you’re scuba diving or snorkeling in clear water, he said you know a shark can swim faster than you, so you still don’t feel in control.
Ropeik also says media coverage of shark attacks is to thank for our continued obsession. He calls that “availability awareness,” meaning “the more it’s on our radar screen, the more prominence it holds on our risk radar.”
As a former television producer, he understands that rare and violent stories get more attention and media outlets know people will pay more attention to “stories about the possibility of our death.”
But, he said, there’s a downside to the overexposure. When our brains are saturated with fears about unlikely things such as shark attacks, we don’t pay as much attention to safety precautions we actually should follow — like wearing sunscreen, for example.
Getty Images/iStockphoto
“What we are aware of either from personal experience or the media is what fills up our risk radar screen, which has only so much room on it,” Ropeik said. “So when there are lots of stories about sharks, that’s going to grab up room that could have gone to something else.”
There’s another downside to the shark obsession, said James Sulikowski, a professor in the Marine Science Department at the University of New England. That is that historically, people have been less interested in the conservation of sharks because they’ve been portrayed as villains.
“Most people don’t understand sharks are like us, they grow slowly, live long lives and have very few offspring, so they’re very susceptible to fishing pressure,” he said.
However, that’s changing, Sulikowski says. Science has made people aware of how important sharks are to the entire marine ecosystem and has made them care more about protecting them.
Still, he says sharks are fighting a battle other threatened species don’t have to fight: negative publicity.
“We still need to keep getting the importance of sharks out because every time there’s a shark attack, everyone freaks out,” he said.
He hopes people can “take a step back and think about what the statistics really are.”
For example, he said, you’re more likely to be bitten by another person on a New York City subway than be bitten by a shark.
At about the same moment that millions of Americans sat staring at their television or laptop or phone—watching the results from the presidential election stream in, seeing state after state called for Donald Trump—Kim Cobb was SCUBA diving near the center of the Pacific Ocean. She did not watch the same trickle of news as other Americans. She surfaced, heard the results, and dove in the water again. She was, after all, attending to devastation.Cobb is a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. On November 8, she was on her most recent of many research trips to Kiritimati Island reef, the largest coral atoll in the world. (Kirimati is pronounced like Christmas.) She first began studying the reef in 1997, during the last big El Niño warming event; she has returned nearly every year since. Last year, she went three times.“We had been waiting for the big one. And boy… did it happen,” she told me earlier this year. “It really rolled out at an unprecedented magnitude. This particular El Niño event had its maximum temperature loading almost in a bulls-eye almost around Kirimati Island.”
By any measure, its caused a cataclysm. Eighty-five percent of the corals in the reef died: They will never recover, disintegrating into sand over the next several years. Two-thirds of the surviving corals bleached in some way, meaning they did not reproduce and may have sustained long-term damage.“Almost none of this reef has made it through 2015 and 2016,” Cobb said, calling the event “the wholesale destruction of the reef.”By any measure, 2016 was not a good year for coral reefs. El Niño raised ocean temperatures worldwide, devastating corals the world over. The Great Barrier Reef—the sprawling system off the coast of Australia, and among the world’s most biodiverse reef systems—suffered a particularly debilitating year. Miles and miles of the coral reef bleached so severely, and for so long, that they died.
On Monday, news broke that it happened again. For the second year in a row, warm ocean temperatures are bleaching the Great Barrier Reef. The white splotches of ocean floor indicative of the phenomenon run even farther south—some 500 kilometers—than they did last year. The bleaching occurred even though there is no worldwide El Niño this year: The reef is ailed not by a rare climatic phenomenon but by the baseline warming of the oceans.
Until this decade, back-to-back bleaching events like that simply didn’t happen.
“It’s new. It is so new. It’s a complete change in the phenomenon that all of us study,” said Ruth Gates, a professor at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and the president of the International Society for Reef Studies. “We knew that this day would come—we’ve been seeing the thermal-tolerance threshold for corals get closer and closer, and we knew it was pushing over the limit for coral survival.”
“There will now be years where it doesn’t take an El Niño event to reach the bleaching threshold. This is going to be statistically more likely in a warming world,” said Cobb.The intensity and duration of bleaching events is ultimately leading to a change in the study of coral reefs overall. Instead of focusing on reefs in situ, scientists are increasingly having to study how reefs recover from warming oceans and other forms of environmental disaster.“We are in a different moment with coral reefs right now. We’ve had this global insult on reefs. The choice now is to study recovery because that’s what we are doing, because that’s what we have to do,” said Gates.
The reef that Gates knows best—the coral reef in Kāne’ohe Bay, right next to the institute where she works—was one of the first in the world to suffer a back-to-back bleaching. In 2014, a warming Pacific pushed the Kāne’ohe Bay corals to warm; in 2015, the sea bleached them again. “We were not really expecting it to be a bleaching year then and we didn’t expect it to be a bleaching year the following year,” she told me.
Since then, she has been monitoring the health of the reef and watched it recover. Scientists still don’t know how repeated bleaching events—especially in back-to-back years—will affect the long-term health of a coral reef. Kāne’ohe Bay has recovered faster and more vigorously than Gates expected, but it is a considerably less biodiverse reef than the Great Barrier Reef. Much of Gates’ research focuses on expanding coral resilience between reefs. (There was a wonderful New Yorker profile on her work last year.)
Cobb, meanwhile, is organizing research into how Kirimati Island bounces back from the El Niño bleaching. Thankfully, Kirimati has been slightly cooler than normal over the last few months, and baby corals have already begun to sprout in the reef. “We’ll see in out years as a team of climate scientists, ecologists, and oceanographers focus on this island,” she told me. “We plan on witnessing its recovery in its various stages and trying to see how it differs from the reef that was there before this event.”This represents another major step forward for the field. When Gates started her doctoral research in the 1980s, scientists were still beginning to understand that coral bleaching can occur in the first place. Now, they know it is triggered in large part by temperature changes.The devastation to coral reefs will continue as climate change runs apace. The International Society for Reef Studies predicts that 90 percent of coral reefs worldwide will be at risk of destruction by 2050. (This stands out: Many really dire predictions of severe climate damage start after 2050.)
“We are just one species that are in line to be hit very heavily by climate change,” said Gates. “Coral reefs are in the front line but they’re telling us something very important.”
How much is a shark worth? That might sound like a strange question. To conservationists, biologists (like Ocean Ramsey) or people who love the ocean, it might be impossible to quantify the value of such a magnificent creature. For fishers around the world, the answer is probably more straightforward. But one thing is now clear: sharks are worth much more alive than dead in the state of Florida.
A new, independent report commissioned by Oceana found that live sharks provide significant economic benefits to the state of Florida. Divers and tourists travel from around the world to see sharks in person, supporting a tourism industry that depends on healthy animals.
Given the global threats to survival of sharks and the key roles they play both in nature and in some coastal economies, the report commissioned by Oceana, and research by others, highlights the need for Congress to pass the proposed Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act to enact a nationwide ban on the trade of shark fins.
The bill, introduced by Reps. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Gregorio Sablan (I-MP), would remove the United States from the global shark fin market, which is driven primarily by the demand for shark fin soup in Asia.
Just like their vital role in maritime ecosystems, sharks live at the center of a financial network that generates both economic revenue and growth. But the potential value of a shark ends abruptly once it has been killed. A creature that could live for decades as a driver of economic growth is instead reduced to the sale price of its meat or fins.
As detailed in the report commissioned by Oceana, shark-driven tourism is booming in the state of Florida. Direct expenditures like boat rentals, food and lodging for shark-encounter dives totaled roughly $220 million and supported over 3,700 jobs in 2016. In contrast, the shark fishery in Florida generated only $960,000 in commercial landings in 2015. In fact, the value of live sharks in Florida significantly overshadowed the value of shark fin exports from the entire United States, which totaled little more than $1 million in 2015. In the long run, sharks can simply generate more revenue when alive and swimming in Florida waters than killed and sold for their fins.
The shark diving industry is popular in other states, including North Carolina and Rhode Island. Operators also work off the coast of California, with shark diving excursions available in San Diego and San Francisco. Ensuring healthy shark populations will help local businesses in these economies as well.
Another recent study conducted in the Bahamas demonstrated similar results: Sharks and rays helped create about 1.3 percent of Bahama’s Gross Domestic Product in 2014. Driven mainly by the shark diving industry, sharks and their relatives generate a total of $113.8 million in revenues each year for the Bahamas. Similarly, Fiji and the Maldives earn $42.2 and $38.6 million per year, respectively, from their shark diving industries.
In addition to their economic value, sharks are essential for healthy oceans. While some are apex predators, all sharks play a crucial part in regulating and maintaining balance in marine ecosystems through their places in the food chain. This role is threatened, however, because sharks are all too easily overfished. Some species are slow-growing and long-lived. They reproduce late in life and have few offspring compared to other fish. These factors make these species prone to overexploitation, and populations can take a long time to recover once they’ve declined.
A major threat to sharks comes from the demand for shark fins, which creates an incentive for shark finning – a brutal practice where a shark’s fins are cut off and its body discarded at sea, where it can drown, bleed to death or be eaten alive by other fish. Fins from as many as 73 million sharks end up in the global shark fin trade every year. And though the act of shark finning is illegal in U.S. waters, shark fins continue to be bought and sold in many parts of the United States.
Eleven U.S. states, plus the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and Guam, have already banned the sale or trade of most shark fins. But when these products are banned in one state, the market simply shifts to a new location.
In 2013, for instance, no shark fins were exported out of Savannah, Georgia. But after Texas began cracking down on the trade, the market shifted, and Savannah became the number one U.S. city for shark fin exports. The U.S. also continues to import fins, including from countries with no finning bans in place. In the end, only a national fin ban will stop the buying and selling of shark fin products throughout the U.S.
It may seem crude to ask, “How much is a shark worth?” But the importance of sharks to Florida’s economy demonstrates the tangible impact these animals have in the U.S., making the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act a necessary step to protect them. Together, we can make the U.S. a global leader in shark conservation and continue to enjoy the economic and environmental value that sharks bring to our seas.
The family of award-winning “Sharkwater” filmmaker and marine biologist, Rob Stewart, has filed a lawsuit claiming damages and blaming Stewart’s dive instructor and boat crew for his death.
Stewart went missing off the coast of the Florida Keys in January. His body was recovered after a three-day search by the Coast Guard.
Now, two months after Stewart’s death, the Canadian filmmaker’s grieving parents, Brian and Sandy Stewart, sat down with ABC News, along with their attorney Michael Haggard, to discuss the tragic incident.
“The is no way anyone should ever die the way Rob died and it’s the responsibility of the people involved that caused it,” said Brian Stewart. “Had somebody had their eyes on the water,” he continued, “you keep your eyes on the people in the water and of all things the student comes out first, not the diver.”
The complaint says that Stewart and his instructor, Peter Sotis, were diving the Queen of Nassau wreck to remove a grappling hook that had been attached to the underwater wreckage for navigational purposes to mark the wreck and assist in maintaining its location while divers were in the water. The hook was located 230-feet below the surface of the water off the coast of Islamorada, Florida.
Sotis and Stewart used new rebreathers — a piece of scuba diving equipment that controls the mix of oxygen supplied to the diver by recycling exhaled breath– for their dive. When Sotis reportedly resurfaced to board the boat due to issues breathing, he received “emergency aid,” while supervisors failed to “monitor, keep eyes on, and/or rescue” Stewart, according to the complaint.
“So many things went wrong,” said Sandy Stewart. “So many careless mistakes were made and [Rob] would want to make sure this didn’t happen to anyone else again.”
The family’s attorney told ABC News that those allegedly negligent actions are what led to the disappearance and death of their son. “The only reason Peter Sotis is alive today is he left his student in the water —- which is a cardinal sin in the diving industry,” Haggard said.
“He didn’t protect the student, he got on the boat and left his student in the water,” Haggard continued. “It’s so preventable that it’s scary.”
Sotis and the boat crew did not reply to ABC News’ request for comment.
Actor Adrian Grenier and entrepreneur Richard Branson posted emotional tributes on social media to Stewart after his death.
Brian Stewart said his son’s legacy will continue to live on. The Stewarts told ABC News they intend to finish shooting their son’s sequel and hope his story inspires others to explore.
“He always used to take off and go to another part of the world with his camera,” he said. “To us, a little part that makes me go on is the fact that he is still off shooting.”
He added, “Somehow what he wants done is going to be done.”
Clownfish on the Great Barrier Reef | Photo: GreensMPs, some rights reserved
Coral reefs are in danger, and our dumping way too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is a big reason why. Climate change is warming the oceans and raising sea level, and that extra CO2 dissolved in seawater is literally undermining the foundations of coral reef ecosystems worldwide.
But these delicate rainforests of the sea face a lot of other problems, and most of them are a result of human activity. Even if we solved the climate problem overnight — which would be a good idea — coral reefs would still be in trouble. Here are some of the reasons why.
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Fishing practices
Coral reefs occupy less than one quarter of one percent of our oceans, but they’re home to an estimated 25 percent of all marine life. That means that on average, coral reefs have 100 times more marine life per square mile than the rest of the ocean.
That superabundance of marine species includes the coral polyps themselves, mussels and crustaceans, sponges and other invertebrates, sea turtles, seahorses, and bony fish. About a quarter of the ocean’s fish species rely on coral reefs as a sheltered environment in which to deposit their eggs, giving young fish a bit of protection after they hatch.
So it’s no accident that coral reefs are disproportionately affected by the fishing industry: if you want to catch a fish, you go where the fish are.
People have harvested fish near coral reefs for centuries, and a significant proportion of ocean fish in markets today comes from fish that depend on, and hang out near, coral reefs. In 2001, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated that commercial fishing near coral reefs was a $100 million a year industry in the U.S. alone. In some parts of the world, reefs are the source of as much as a quarter of the seafood sold locally.
Discarded net in Hawaii. Fishing net jetsam like this can badly damage reefs. | Photo: NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program
As demand for fish grows and pressure on fish intensifies, the coral reefs of the world are taking the hit. Industrial fishing boats that use trawl nets scrape the ocean floor. That’s a practice that’s destructive just about anywhere at sea, but especially so at coral reefs, whose delicate skeletons of calcium carbonate break off easily. Discarded fishing nets such as driftnets can also become entangled in corals and break polyps off the reef.
Industrial fishing boats are taking more and more of the oceans’ fish, and that means subsistence and small-scale fishermen who might have used less destructive methods in the past are increasingly resorting to drastic measures to catch reef fish. Some use “blast fishing,” in which a stick of dynamite is thrown into the water near a reef; when it explodes, stunned fish float to the surface where they can be scooped up.
Even recreational fishing near coral reefs — in the U.S., an industry larger than commercial coral reef fishing, according to NOAA — can damage reefs, as everything from fishing tackle to boat anchors can damage and dislodge corals.
And then there’s the simple matter of overfishing, which can harm coral reef ecosystems by changing the local ecological balance.
What you can do: Make sure the seafood you eat is harvested as sustainably as possible. The Monterey Bay Aquarium offers apps and other information to help you make the right choices in the store.
Crown of thorns starfish eating coral in Fiji | Photo: Derek Keats, some rights reserved
Disruptions and invasions
The canonical example of how overfishing can damage coral reefs doesn’t involve a fish harvested for food, but instead a sea snail, the giant triton. The giant triton is in great demand for its shell, which is used mainly as a decoration. The triton is also one of the few known predators of the crown of thorns starfish, a foot-wide, 21-armed sea star that eats coral. The crown of thorns is an integral part of reef ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific region near Australia, as long as its population is kept in check. In some reef areas, depletion of tritons has been linked to serious outbreaks of crown of thorns starfish, and those outbreaks can devastate large sections of a reef in short order. Not all scientists agree that overharvesting of tritons is primarily responsible for starfish outbreaks, but it certainly doesn’t help.
Some human disruptions of coral reef ecosystems aren’t done on purpose. Coral polyps survive through an intimate partnership with small photosynthesizing microorganisms called zooxanthallae, which are incorporated into the polyp’s body. There, they photosynthesize light filtering through the seawater, turning it and CO2 into food, which they share with the polyp, allowing both to survive.
When ships release ballast water near coral reefs, that water often contains exotic species of algae, which can start growing on the reef. Algae can also be introduced as fouling on a ship’s hull, on scuba gear that’s insufficiently cleaned after diving in algae-rich waters, or through dumping of aquaria into the sea. Once a large form of algae takes hold, it can reproduce rapidly and cover much of the reef in a short time. That shades out the coral polyps and their zooxanthallae, which starve and die. Reefs invaded by algae become far less useful as habitat, which results in collapse of the local ecosystem as other reef dwellers die or move away.
A lionfish where it belongs: in Bali. | Photo: Chika Watanabe, some rights reserved
Lionfish are another species causing damage to coral reef ecosystems. Native to reefs in the Indo-Pacific region, lionfish were introduced to reefs in the Atlantic and Caribbean in the 20th Century — probably on multiple occasions by aquarists and their suppliers dumping captive lionfish into the ocean.
Lionfish are very active predators: one study of reefs in the Caribbean and Atlantic found that they readily consume more than 40 species of reef fish. In their native range, lionfish are eaten by everything from sharks to groupers to moray eels, and smaller fish and birds help out by eating floating lionfish egg sacs. In the Atlantic, groupers have been found to eat lionfish, and that’s good news for reefs where groupers are abundant. But groupers have been over-fished in many places. Where there are few groupers, lionfish can prosper.
As a result, lionfish have spread rapidly throughout the reefs of the western North Atlantic and the Caribbean, where they can denude a reef of the majority of its small fish — including juvenile members of much larger species, like the groupers that might have grown up to control lionfish numbers. That loss of fish has many possible effects that biologists are still sorting out, but one certain result is a loss of larger fish such as grouper who can’t find food, because lionfish have eaten it all. A lionfish invasion can reduce the biological diversity of a coral reef by 80 percent.
What you can do: Don’t ‘liberate” fish and plants from your salt water aquarium by dumping them into the ocean. Clean your water gear, from wetsuits to boats to surfboards, when traveling to reef country. Investigate your vacation hosts’ environmental practices, and stay only with those businesses that work to reduce their impact. And if you eat fish, consider adding lionfish to the menu.
Divers explore a reef. | Photo: Tchami, some rights reserved
Recreation
Reefs can get loved to death. Their startling beauty and biodiversity attracts visitors reliably enough to power the economies of many coastal communities. But the influx of people takes its toll on the reef ecosystem.
The most direct damage comes from divers’ physical presence near the reef. Careless anchoring, as with fishing boats, can damage reefs. So can an errant swim fin, tank, or other diver body part. Even just touching a coral can cause damage, perhaps killing the polyp and its neighbors by introducing infection. The amount of damage an individual diver can do might be minimal, but multiply it by tens of thousands of divers in a season — millions in some places —and the damage mounts.
And then there’s the infrastructure set up to host the tourists. Small coastal communities, especially in places without stringent environmental protection laws, can seriously harm the reefs that provide their livelihood through sewage dumping, runoff of oil and other pollutants, and even construction of new hotels, which can cause sediment to run off into the ocean.
One surprising way in which recreation can kill reefs: coral polyps and their zooxanthallae are extremely sensitive to the UV blockers in sunscreen: a very small amount can kill off a surprisingly large swathe of reef.
What you can do: investigate whether your destination follows environmental best practices such as pollution control. Dive coral-safe: there are resources you can use to learn how. And go easy on the sunscreen: cover up with a long-sleeved shirt, trousers, or wetsuit instead.
Spilled oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster | Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife
Pollution
As of 2010, 44 percent of us worldwide live within 100 kilometers —62 miles and change —of a coastline. That’s three and one-quarter billion people, and we generate a whole lot of waste. Sewage laden with plant nutrients, pathogens and pharmaceutical compounds can flow into the ocean from even the most environmentally conscientious communities. Near reefs, the extra plant food from sewage can boost growth of invasive algae, and many common chemical contaminants can kill corals or the animals that live with them.
Silt runoff, mostly from agriculture, can smother reefs both through depriving reef animals of oxygen, as the organic matter in the silt breaks down, to literally smothering the reefs: even a thin layer of silt will keep that all-important sunlight from reaching the zooxanthallae.
More on coral reefs
Another kind of pollution coral biologists have their eye on is microplastic. These tiny particles of plastic, the breakdown products of our grocery bags, plastic straws, bicycle helmets and water bottles, are increasingly ubiquitous in the ocean. Though coral do get a significant amount of food from their zooxanthallae, they also eat plankton out of seawater. Studies show that corals can’t distinguish between plankton and microplastic, and consume the latter in significant amounts. No one’s sure yet precisely what effect this has on coral polyps. But there’s some chance that the inert plastic could interfere with normal feeding, and it’s been established that microplastic particles tend to collect chemical pollutants dissolved in seawater.
Oil spills, as you might expect, are particularly hazardous to corals, in part because they can interfere with an entire year’s worth of reproductive cycle. Corals spawn to reproduce: all at once, responding to some cue scientists haven’t quite puzzled out yet, all the corals in a reef will release egg and sperm cells, which float to the surface. There, those eggs that are successfully fertilized by sperm develop into coral larvae, called planula. The planula drop to the ocean floor, where — if they’re lucky — they’ll find something hard to hold onto at the right depth to start building a reef, or adding to an existing one.
That means oil floating on the surface can kill an entire generation of coral all at once. If the oil spill is treated with dispersants, the oil will sink to the seabed, where it can cause further serious injury to reefs.
What you can do: Participate in a beach cleanup, which is the most effective way of dealing with plastic already dumped in the ocean. Reduce your consumption of disposable plastic items. Dispose of used motor oil and household chemicals at recycling or hazardous material collection sites instead of dumping them into the storm drain. And perhaps most importantly, advocate for stronger pollution control laws.
This captive blue tang doesn’t look thrilled. | Photo: Stéphane Duquesne, some rights reserved
The tropical fish trade
It’s a little ironic. The plot of Pixar’s 2003 movie “Finding Nemo” centered on how cruel it was to take the little clownfish Nemo from their coral reef habitat and confine them in salt water aquaria. People saw the film, enjoyed it, and then responded by trying to get their own clownfish to keep in an aquarium. According to the group Saving Nemo, a huge spike in retail clownfish sales followed the film’s release.
The problem: at that time, almost all the clownfish sold in retail stores in affluent countries were captured from the wild, from the coral reefs on which they live.
It’s not just clownfish: the vast majority of tropical fish sold to salt water aquarium hobbyists are wild-captured. Of around 1,800 species of reef fish sold commercially, only a few are being raised commercially. A full 98 percent of saltwater animals sold to hobbyists, from fish to crabs to living corals, are wild-caught. And the majority of those animals collected don’t live long enough to reach the retail store.
In 2008, NOAA reported that about 90 percent of the 11 million reef fish sold commercially each year in the United States are caught using sodium cyanide, which collectors squirt onto reefs. Cyanide in the proper concentration stuns the fish, which can then be scooped up easily and transported. Cyanide kills about ten square feet of reef for every single fish captured, and it kills a fair number of the fish as well — though they may take several weeks to die of the poison.
Several nations have banned cyanide fishing, but enforcement is often lax to nonexistent. Groups like For the Fishes are campaigning to educate aquarists about the downside of their hobby, and conservation groups are urging the United States to begin testing imported fish for traces of cyanide. Federal law prohibits importation of wildlife caught in ways that are illegal in the country of origin.
Since “Nemo’s” release breeders have started producing clownfish commercially. This could potentially mean an end to wild-caught clownfish, though to date only a quarter of commercially available clownfish are captive bred.
And the 2016 release of “Nemo’s” sequel, “Finding Dory,” heightened fears among conservationists that the spike in clownfish demand could play out again with blue tangs, the species to which the Ellen DeGeneres-voiced Dory belonged. While clownfish are only moderately difficult to keep healthy in captivity, blue tangs are very difficult. They require a large amount of space (aquarists recommend an eight-foot-long tank at a minimum for a single blue tang), and, given expert and expensive care, can live for decades.
A surge in demand for blue tangs carries with it one threat the clownfish boom lacked: while captive breeding might reduce wild clownfish collection, no such option seems to exist for blue tangs, who are surpassingly reluctant to reproduce in captivity. Aquarium fish suppliers won’t be breeding blue tang clans in captivity anytime soon, which means that every captive blue tang represents perhaps nine that died on the way to the retailer, and about 100 square feet of dead reef. The same goes for almost all of the other saltwater aquarium species now available for purchase in the U.S.
What you can do: If you are keep a salt water tropical aquarium, make sure your fish are purchased ethically. Choose species that aren’t at risk in the wild, so that even if your supplier misinforms you, your purchase is unlikely to deplete populations at risk — though remember, capture itself can destroy a large amount of coral reef. For the Fishes has released an iOS app called TankWatch, which will guide hobbyists through the process of making ethical purchases. The group says an Android version will be available soon. And whatever you do, don’t “liberate” any tropical fish into the ocean, whether they’re clownfish or lionfish. Even if they’re native to the part of the ocean where you release them, they can spread diseases caught in captivity to wild populations.
Banner: Coral Reef at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Jim Maragos/USFWS
Each year DAN publishes their annual report which includes statistics concerning diving accidents and fatalities. DAN is Divers Alert Network, the diving industry’s largest membership association. Their main focus is safety. They conduct and sponsor research into illnesses/ accidents related to scuba diving. DAN also provides emergency assistance and medical information resources. The network is also a provider of dive insurance. In their 2016 Annual Report, they list what they call their Ten Most Wanted Improvements in Scuba. If you are already a certified diver you should already be aware of the risks that are involved with scuba diving. However, in many cases, divers tend to lose sight of their training and act in a manner that increases their risk sometimes to a fatal level.
Overall, scuba diving is safe when you are properly trained. If you are not a certified diver than the information in this article might have the tenancy of putting you off diving. Do not let it, the report does point out that only 2 out of every million dives results in a death in the United States. There is on average only 1 emergency room visit of ever 100,000 dives. See the article “How Safe is My Scuba Diving Friend While Diving” to get a better overview of dive safety.
Ten Most Wanted Improvements in Scuba Diving
The information in the annual report comes from a number of sources. Most of the more serious come from follow-ups to contacts to the emergency numbers. Divers are also requested to submit a report if something happens while they are diving. Many of these reports are available on the DAN website. DAN has seen ten areas that improvements in scuba practices can be made. The recommendations are not new, as they are all covered in diver training. However, accident reports show that divers need to focus on these items more.
Correct Weighting
Diving with the correct weights is critical for safe diving. We hear that over and over again yet it still frequently becomes one of the triggers for a diving mishap. If you read the annual report you will find case studies of divers being grossly over weighted. One of the fatal cases concerning a diver using a steel tank found on the bottom after being observed sinking from a safety stop. The diver was found with a fully inflated BCD and he had removed his weight belt. However, this was not enough to become positively buoyant at the depth he was found. Investigation showed that the diver had 50 pounds of weights but only 17 pounds of that was on his weight belt. Another drowning case had a diver 20 pounds over-weighted.
You will also see cases where divers ran into trouble being under-weighted. Mostly these led to DCS when the diver was unable to maintain a safety stop and to control their rate of ascent.
Greater Buoyancy Control
Closely related to the proper weighting is the issue of Buoyancy control. Improper control has led to divers having difficulties exiting a wreck or other overhead environment. Poor control does make your safety stops more difficult and might even cause a diver to inadvertently return to the surface or to dive deeper than intended. Divers who use the BCD extensively to maintain their position in the water are more likely to face an out of air issue. While not as much of a safety issue, good buoyancy control helps protect the environment.
More Attention to Gas Planning
The highest percentage of triggers in diving accidents for divers under 50 is running out of air. It ties with cardiac arrest for divers of all ages. Only a small percentage of these incidents happen because of a sudden loss of air. Faulty gauges are one cause but the biggest reasons are poor planning and the diver not paying attention to details. Divers need to plan the dive with significant breathing gas available to properly return to the surface. We all train for out of air conditions, but, they still happen and divers still die.
Better Ascent Rate Control
DCI is one of the greatest concerns associated with fast ascents. The current “standard” is 30 feet per minute. Still many divers were certified when the “standard” was 60 feet per minute and still use that. Then there are those that believe in a combination when diving deep. They use a rate of 60 feet per minute at deeper depths and only 30 feet per minute for the last 60 feet. There have only been limited studies that show which rate is best. All dives are decompression dives.
What we call an NDL dive is just a dive where the need for decompression is met within the time frame of our ascent. If we allow more time for the ascent, we are in turn allowing more time for our body to off gas nitrogen. If we ascend rapidly, we are not providing the time necessary. Many divers feel that the dive is ending when they head to the surface. That is not necessarily true. A slow ascent can allow you to see things you might not see at a faster ascent. Take your time and look around.
Increased Use of Checklists
The proper use of checklist and dive buddy checks can catch many potential problems before they become one. A checklist makes sure we did not forget to do something to prepare for the dive. Sure getting ready for a dive does become second nature for us. It does not mean we will not miss a step. Pilots always do a pre-flight check before they take off, our position 100 feet underwater is not safer than a pilot 100 feet above the surface. Improvements in Scuba diving checklist usage will help lessen stupid errors.
Equalize often to avoid injuries. Photograph by Greg Grimes
Fewer Equalizing Injuries
Decompression sickness was the most commonly reported concern through the emergency line. However, including the information line and email records, more barotrauma-related complaints were identified, mostly pertaining to ear barotrauma. The most common form of ear barotrauma was middle ear barotrauma. These injuries are caused when the inner ear is not equalized properly. There were also some injuries to the eyes due to mask equalization.
Improved Cardiovascular Health in Divers
While divers are stereotyped as being fit and adventures, poor cardiovascular health is the primary health concern for scuba divers. Cardiac arrest was the leading trigger for diving fatalities. Eighty-four percent of males and 69% of females who died due to a cardiac event were 40 years or older. Fifty-three percent of male and 54% of female victims were 50 years old or more. While drowning was listed in the majority of cases as the cause of death, cardiac arrest was involved in many of those.
Obesity may also a factor in scuba diving deaths. According to the report, Over 50% of the divers who died in the United States were obese. This compares to a rate of obesity of 35% in the general population.
Scuba diving is not always seen as an intense form of exercise. Unlike running or skiing where people prepare themselves for the activity, divers often do not have an exercise program to keep them dive fit. Get yourself fit for diving and for your life.
Diving More Often (or more pre-trip Refresher Training)
Diving is a set of skills and abilities that you must be fresh to be at your best. Divers who have taken a break from diving may need help getting back their skills. Refresher training is good to help assist that. However, refresher training will not bring you back to your optimum best by itself. You will need to continue to work at it to get back where you were. The simple solution is to be a more active diver.
It may look beautiful but if you are not trained for an overhead environment, then stay out. Photograph by Derek Keats
Greater Attention to Diving Within Limits
Dive within your limits is taught from day one, still, it is a factor in many deaths. Certain disciplines such as cave diving need special training. You will find reports of novice divers diving beyond 100 feet and experiencing nitrogen narcosis. There is nothing wrong with expanding your limits, but improvements in Scuba skills should be done gradually and in those cases where training is needed after you get the training.
Fewer Equipment Issues / Improved Maintenance
While Improvements in Scuba diving equipment has made them more reliable over the years, equipment problems can become a trigger that leads to an accident. A poorly maintained regulator might work on a shallow dive but be unable to supply enough airflow at depths. An improperly cleaned BCD might have a value that does not seal properly. Properly maintained equipment will last a long time. Poorly maintain it and it might fail within a year.
As you look forward to your next dive trip or dive season, think over the DAN’s Ten Most Wanted Improvements in Scuba. How do you fare with those tasks?
Notably, many pointed that the country is truly a swimmer’s paradise. Here are the top five diving destinations for you.
(Photo: DOTPhilipines/YoutubeScreenshot/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmCwWbAWyZ8)
The Philippines is considered by many as one of the world’s best diving spots especially when one gets to experience swimming in its clear waters and among the coral reefs. One can find plenty of diving spots in the country with a lot of great dive resorts. If you’re headed to this side of the world soon and want to do see some breathtaking marine life, here are five placed that you should check out.
Monad Shoal, Malapascua. If you want to swim with the sharks, head to Monad Shoal, the diving spot known to many as an ideal destination for viewing the predators. Even if the sharks aren’t present when you’re diving in the reef, you can see various marine life like squid, octopus, barracuda, Moorish idols, eels, and lionfish.
Ticao Pass, Masbate. The Ticao Pass is known as the Manta Bowl of the country. There’ll be plenty of manta rays swimming across the waters of the pass. Occasionally, there’ll be whale sharks making their way to the Pass so that they can arrive at Donsol.
Puerto Galera, Mindoro. There are over 40 diving sites found in Puerto Galera, and they’re all ranging from the peaceful and to what they consider as dangerous. Verde Island and Long Beach are where you can simply chill and relax while Sabang and Washing Machine are for hardcore divers.
Coron Bay, Palawan. There’s a Japanese warship called the Morazan Maru that sank duri,ng WWII, making the area perfect for diving because of the unique attraction. Moreover, Coron Bay is where you can find rich and diverse marine life. Schools of fish, turtles and even sea snakes can be found near the wreckage.
Tubbataha Reef National Park in Sulu Sea, Palawan. The famed reef is home to 600 fish species, 360 coral species, 11 shark species, and 13 dolphin and whale species according to the Islands of the Philippines. Not to mention, this diving site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a national park.
Researchers have created a new model for predicting decompression sickness after deep-sea dives that not only estimates the risk, but how severe the symptoms are likely to be.
The US Navy Diving Manual may incorporate the model into its next update, as will commercial products intended to help recreational divers plan their ascents to avoid “the bends.”
The results appear online on March 15, 2017, in the journal PLOS ONE.
“The current guidelines only give you a probability as to whether or not decompression sickness is likely to happen after a given dive,” said Laurens Howle, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke, who has been working on these models with the Navy for a decade. “This is the first time we’ve been able to also address the likely severity of the potential sickness, helping divers determine acceptable risk.”
All risks have two components — the likelihood of something bad happening and just how bad that something is likely to be. Having a model that accurately provides both aspects will allow divers to better plan safe depths and ascents to help their bodies adjust — preventing painful and potentially fatal results.
Decompression sickness occurs when dissolved gasses such as nitrogen and helium come out of solution inside the body, forming dangerous, painful bubbles. This happens when divers ascend too quickly, and the pressure of gasses within various tissues exceeds that of the surrounding pressure.
“Getting the bends is not fun,” said Greg Murphy, a doctoral candidate in Howle’s laboratory, who has experienced the full severity spectrum of decompression sickness firsthand. “While I was diving in a salvage zone for the Navy, my anchor broke and I shot to the surface. On the ride to the hospital, I could barely breathe even with pure oxygen.”
No divers had to take such risks to gather data for the new model, as the Navy has a dataset of more than 3,000 simulated dives conducted in a carefully controlled hyperbaric chamber. Using that data, along with models of how gasses are absorbed and released by human tissue, Howle crunched the numbers to sort dives into six levels of potential severity.
Howle then divided the categories into a mild manifestation grouping (pain only) and a serious manifestation grouping (likely neurological or cardiopulmonary symptoms). He then assigned the same levels of acceptable risk currently used by the Navy to each. With a slight tweak to the definition of mild decompression sickness, the resulting model and boundaries of acceptable risk closely matched the practices already in place in the Navy, making it a useful predictive tool moving forward.
“Now that we have this model, we can use it to quickly and accurately predict the likelihood and severity of decompression sickness simultaneously to make decisions,” said Howle. “We’re also working to optimize the algorithm so that it could operate on a diver-worn computer so adjustments and new predictions could be made on the fly.”
Story Source:
Materials provided by Duke University. Original written by Ken Kingery. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
