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Specialist diving group teams up with British conservation charity to lower impact of scuba tourism on threatened reefs

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The threat posed to coral reefs by scuba diving in Egypt and Thailand is so serious that officials have banned certain operators or suspended the sport altogether, but now moves are afoot to make diving tourism more sustainable.

A partnership between the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (Padi), the world’s largest training group, and the UN-backed Reef-World Foundation, a British conservation charity, will encourage the industry to sign up to the Green Fins scheme, which helps dive centres to reduce their environmental impact and mitigate the damage the burgeoning sport causes to coral reefs worldwide.

James Harvey, operations manager at Reef-World Foundation, said: “When you look at busy dive sites, you often see more broken corals, a lower species diversity and a change in fish behaviour, compared with other sites in the same areas. These corals are less likely to recover from bleaching events.

“Our ultimate goal is to reduce local threats to coral reefs, allowing them to be more resilient to global impacts such as climate change.”

Globally, the diving and snorkelling industry is one of the fastest growing tourism sectors, and about 25 million divers are certified by Padi. A number of studies have linked the rise of such tourism in developing counties and under-managed coastal regions to coral disease.

Novice divers, of whom there are an one and a half million a year, pose the biggest threat to corals, particularly in tourist hotspots, according to Harvey.

“Novice divers dive in an upright manner, with their fins down,” he said. “They kick up sediment and corals use a lot of energy to clean themselves, which makes them vulnerable to climate change and disease.”

Other risks posed to marine life by the industry include physical damage from heavy anchors used by dive boats, and the oil and other pollution the boats discharge.

Climate change has also increased large-scale bleaching and mass mortality of corals, according to a study published in Science.

Reef-World operates the Green Fins scheme, established in partnership with UN Environment, to certify dive centres as environmentally friendly and strengthen regulations and laws with governments in developing countries.

Member dive centres are checked annually against a 15-point code of conduct, aimed at reducing the risk to corals. Nine countries and 550 centres, mainly in south-east Asia, have already signed up.

Through the Padi partnership, Reef-World hopes to expand the scheme and is already working with partners in the Dominican Republic and involved in talks with Egypt, according to the UN.

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Jerker Tamelander, the head of the UN Environment coral unit, based in Bangkok, said: “Based on research we’ve done we have reduced the environmental footprint of more than 500 dive centres in Asia. This partnership is set to raise the sustainability bar of the diving industry and will help establish environmentally friendly diving as the new norm.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scuba divers in Palau swim close to coral reef. The Pacific. The Pacific island country is banning ‘reef-toxic’ sunscreen from 2020. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Drew Richardson, president and CEO of Padi Worldwide, saidthe organisation is committed to “acting as a force for good”. “By empowering divers and connecting them to the Padi family and issues relevant to our industry, we can help people be a powerful catalyst for change,” he said.

Thailand, a country that makes 10% of its GDP from tourism, this year closed Maya Bay, made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio’s film the Beach, because of environmental damage by tourism. In 2016, it closed 10 dive sites in an attempt to slow a coral bleaching crisis.

Last year, the governor of the Red Sea in Egypt suspended and fined a boat operator, after warnings that iron anchors were causing reef destruction. The Pacific island country of Palau is banning “reef-toxic” sunscreen from 2020 in order to reduce the impact on corals.