For those of you who have been holding yer breath, here is my completely
unbiased report on last Wednesday's Miami workshop.

A little background:

After many years of lip service to ocean conservation, including the
toothless Presidential Executive Order of 1998 establishing the USCRTF
(US Coral Reef Task Force), the Bush administration has finally made
considerable funding available to do something.  Most of the moneys are
in the form of grants from 12 federal agencies, primarily NOAA. The
state of Florida departments of Environmental Protection and Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission provide matching money.

Several dozen “green” organizations have joined the feeding frenzy.
Locally, a group called SFCRI, the South Florida Coral Reef Initiative,
has been put together to coordinate activities.

Initially, SFCRI jumped on a lot of pointy-head proposals that were
heavy on study (computer studies to ascertain the probability of the
existence of coral reefs) and light on action. Early stuff partnered
with such friends of the reefs as the Army Corp of Engineers and the
local municipal wastewater managers who held poster shows of research
divers dragging their consoles through the coral.

Partly as a result of pressure from state agencies, which have some
appreciation for the economic value of the dive industry ($7.8 billion
for Monroe through PB counties), the focus has shifted a bit toward the
new buzz, “sustainable practices”.  As in, “Is pumping a few billion
cubic feet of inter-reef sand to renourish the beach in front of the
Kennedy compound after every storm a sustainable practice?”

I attended one workshop, “Sustainable Diving and Snorkeling Practices”,
in a three day SFCRI conference in Miami.

This workshop was intended to get dive operators together. Of the
roughly fifty people in the room, six were dive operators. I volunteered
that the low turnout was perhaps in part due to the fact that local
operators are mom & pop operations that can’t just take a day off,
especially when the weather is good, to trek to Miami. They hadn’t
thought of that. I suggested that they needed to go to the operators
one-on-one, which seemed to evoke some agreement. We’ll see.

Other than the half-dozen dive operators, the audience was about equally
split between old, fat, bald grantees and their young, nubile, grad
student female assistants. If there’s a place to pick up dive chicks,
it’s certainly in the research arena.

The presentations.

The program was introduced by Chantal Collier, Coral Reef Program
Manager for FDEP. She started off by stating the “key threats”
identified: (1) land-source pollution, (2) construction, (3) Fishing and
diving, and (4) lack of awareness of the reef resource.

She emphasized the existence of funds available to train dive operators.

The first speaker was Alex Brylske, PADI Project Awareness, “Does Diving
Harm the Environment?”

87% of divers surveyed will pay an average 6.7% premium for “green”
diving operations.

Impact of divers globally is none, but locally significant primarily
from the infrastructure, ie construction, over-concentration of divers
on few sites, bottom paint, toilets, etc.

30 studies of diver impact, findings not very consistent, but agreement
that:

4% of divers do 70% of the damage in the first 10 minutes of their dive
– mostly inexperienced divers dropping to the bottom and adjusting their
gear/buoyancy.

Snorkelers do more damage than divers.

80% of all reef damage is from anchors/chains.

Brylske cited studies that showed that a short briefing that told divers
not to trash the reef resulted in significant reduction in damage. (Doh!
Ya have to tell these a.sholes not to trash the reef?????)

Bottom line, the divers are not a threat but dive operations are.

Next up was Brian Somebody from CORAL, a 10,000 member not-for-profit
that has done most of its work in exotic Pacific locations.

Long description of “Crystal Ball” software which, when run a million
times (yes) indicates that lots of boats dropping lots of anchors and
divers in a single spot will damage the reef. Ain’t technology grand!

But bottom line was that 0.8% of damage to the reef is from divers.

Reiteration of need to train operators, cost to operators estimated at
about $20k up front then $1k annually. (That’s about a year’s income for
many!).

Third up was Cheva Heck, a cute 90-pounder and a real diver, who is
running the “Blue Star” program in Monroe (the Keys) for NOAA.

(Monroe gets about 1 million divers & snorkelers each year, and the
entire Keys, from the Tortugas to Miami, is in the national sanctuary
giving the Keys some leverage with programs, funding, etc.)

A few years ago, a program was funded called Dive Smart, intended to
educate divers and operators in reef-friendly practices. The program was
designed by contractors who knew nothing about the Keys and not much
about diving, and it was a dismal failure.

Blue Star is a voluntary program with similar goals but organized from
the bottom up. The goal is to get the operators to sign on to good
diving practices, then to use the Blue Star as a national marketing
gimmick for Blue Star operators.

She pointed out that most of the reef damage in the Keys is at the
mooring buoys: inexperienced divers go down the lines and flop around at
the bottom.

(Interesting that the buoys, which were supposed to reduce damage, have
concentrated the damage. Every solution creates new problems.)

So far, 13 operators in the Keys, of more than 60, have signed on to
Blue Star, including our own Jim Wyatt. The greatest resistance is from
the cattle boats, especially around Key West. (Why am I not surprised by
that?)

The discussion period didn’t produce much.

Mini season took a lot of heat. It appears that the 60 plus dive
operators and 112 shops in Monroe are about evenly split. No question it
brings in a lot of money, no question it trashes the reefs. Some
discussion of special mini-season stamps, and/or a lottery for
mini-season stamps.

Anchoring problem: dive and tow boat operators are pretty good about
calling Fisheries when they see someone anchored on the reef, but
Fisheries does not have the manpower to respond to most calls. (Keep
cutting those anchor lines, guys.)

Fisheries is concerned about the impact of the two spearfishing
tournaments, which are apparently growing fast. Seeking comments.

NOAA has lots of funds with matching from the state. National Fish and
Wildlife has funding for coral reef preservation projects, happy with
their “Anchors Away” project.

Afterthoughts:

There was not nearly the call for regulation of and user fees on divers
that I’ve heard in past meetings, but it did come up a few times.
(Potential source of funding if the Democrats ever get back in.)

The focus has definitely shifted from spending money on PhD theses to
spending money on projects that change behavior and practices. But there
were a few comments that some grad students should be working on papers
on how to modify behavior and practices.

So it goes.