The only reason I would grab coral is because I need to for reasons that
over ride the interest of the coral I grab.  When that happens, I'm going to
grab the coral, gloves or no gloves.

Pure, unadulterated and completely unsupported bullshit.

Lee

Only if you're into splitting hairs.

The unfortunate reality is that the learning rate is incredibly bad.

Based on the divers I've been with over the past several decades, when
they've incurred any sort of reef injury, their learning rate is
generally under 33% (eg, realized that they had a problem to respond
to), and roughly 80% of the time, their learning response was typically
to wear more protection, not to take stuff off and change their
behavior.

IE, your desired learning mode is unsuccessful ~95% of the time.

Note how this alligns up with the Australian study I cited yesterday,
which found that 70% of the damage was caused by only 4% of their
divers.  This means that the vast majority of divers aren't the
problem...its a very small percentage of chronic ones that you need to
identify and correct.   And yet the approach you're advocating is of
the "punish everyone" sort.   Gosh, that's such an enlightened approach
to problem-solving.

Here again is the Bonaire dive bubba that's faithfully obeying the oh
so highly effective "no gloves" rule:

http://www.bonairetalk.com/newsgroup/messages/626/1175.jpg

YMMV, but I'd say that the odds are that he's yet another repeat
Bonaire visitor from somplace way up north (Boston, etc) who doesn't
think that after his first visit that he needs to "waste his time" by
sitting through the Marine Park awareness briefing or to go out with a
DM for a checkout dive just to get his Park tag.  

-hh

so....its the divers touching coral, regardless whether they have gloves or
not, that's the problem, right?

Dennis

That's the theory, but unfortunately, its wrong.

First, what does "forces divers to be more aware" really translate to?

It translates to:  "make an injury more likely AFTER a contact event".

This means that the diver-induced incremental reef damage will have
happened regardless of if there were wearing gloves on or not.  As
such, you're relying on the learning curve of someone getting hurt (or
at best, the psychological fear of injury) to work, to hopefully
slightly reduce the odds of the individual repeating that type of
action in the future.  That's not particularly reliable.

Second, as you point out, for divers who are using their hands as
buoyancy aids, when they do get injured from a lack of gloves, what are
their learning options?

a.  Blame the event on something 'not their fault' and do not learn
b.  Upgrade their lycra skin to a 2mm wetsuit (& bodycrash the reef)
c.  Upgrade the wetsuit to one with rubber knee patches (& continue)
d.  Realize they're not a victim & learn to improve bouyancy skills

Since the majority of the problem are the stupid divers (and our
"victim" attitude to everything today), why do we always want to delude
ourselves into believing that option (d) is for some reason the most
likely?

Third, hands are only part of the diver's body.  As per this study on
diver-caused reef damage,

http://www.reef.crc.org.au/publications/techreport/TechRep4.html

they concluded:

a) 4% of the divers caused over 70% of the detected damage
b) Kicks by divers' fins were the major cause of coral injury.

What this means is that even if we want to say that fins were 51% and
gloves 49% for damage, this report shows that gloves aren't a problem
over 80% of the time.

Finally, here's the real source of diver-induced reef damage in
Bonaire.  Please note that he is *not* wearing gloves:

http://www.bonairetalk.com/newsgroup/messages/626/1175.jpg

This is the nature of educational problem that needs to be overcome.

And FWIW, I'm not blaming this on this diver having a camera.  Its just
that this guy's buoyancy control skills are very obviously grossly
deficient, and this type of behavior is going to be very hard to break
him of, with or without optional toys.

And finally, where did this reef damage come from?  Historically, this
"rubble" area used to be covered with staghorn coral, fire coral and
critters, but as can seen in the photo, its pretty barren, although
there are small coralheads trying to grow back.

So was the reef damage seen here inflicted by the fin of man, attracted
by the webcam?

No, it was not.  Despite  Yahoos like the above, it is known that 99%
of the damage here was caused by non-diver sources.  In this specific
case, it was from Hurricane Lenny.

Finally, please don't get me wrong:  I do agree that we should strive
to prevent reef damage while diving.  My point is that that doesn't
mean that divers are to blame for most of it, with or without gloves.
The reality is that most reef damage comes from non-point sources such
as the flushing of toilets up on this arid island, and similar types of
human consumption activities.  Not someone accidentally rubbing
something on a dive.  When viewed in the context of all sources, reef
damage from direct scuba diver contact is actually a very small
minority.  If we really want to help protect the reef, sure, avoid the
small stuff, but realize that our efforts will be much more productive
if we focus on those sources that we can influence that are a larger
percentage than the proverbial 4%.  To concentrate just on gloves
violates the Pareto Principle.

-hh

Why should it?

It has a beauty and diversity of life that makes the carribean look like a
desert in comparison.

Give it a shot sometime.

Dennis

No more so than fins, knives, guages and octopuses.

Maybe you can't.  Lots of people do it every day.

Dive gloves were invented for a very good reason.  They protect your hands
from things that sting and things that cut, the kind of things that tend to
be included in all the fishing line, cans, bottles and plastic crap I keep
picking up off the bottom of the ocean and the kind of things that
invariably line the permanent lines at the anchor buoys everybody seems to
think need to be at every dive site.

The island doesn't think.  It just sits there.