Marine Conservation and the SAA
Mission Statement The SAA is committed to promoting marine conservation by raising awareness of marine life and its vulnerability, by promoting sound and responsible diving practice through its training programme, by promoting positive action to minimise any negative impacts of diving and diving tourism, and by encouraging participation by its members in research and conservation projects. Introduction
The SAA recognises the global importance of the oceans, and that the health of the sea and its wildlife is crucial to the enjoyment of SCUBA diving, whatever the diver's motivation. It therefore encourages its members to help to protect marine wildlife and marine ecosystems by following a few guidelines. These have been put together to try to ensure that divers minimise any negative impact from their activities, but also to promote positive action to improve the condition of the habitat on which our recreation depends.
Guidelines and Code of Conduct
Maintain sound diving skills, particularly buoyancy control, to avoid bumping into and damaging delicate marine wildlife. Take care to prevent equipment from hanging down and knocking or dragging across marine life. If you do need to steady yourself in the water, or push away from something, one finger carefully placed will do far less harm than a pair of flailing fins. If you should need to settle on the seabed, take care to select an area of bare sand or rock.
Be aware of your fins, and the amount of turbulence they can produce. Avoid kicking up sand or silt, which may smother some sensitive species.
Look, but avoid touching. A number of animals can inflict painful stings or bites, so it is in the diver’s interest to avoid contact! Remember that, despite their hard interior, even touching corals can let in infections, which can lead to their death. Photographers should be particularly careful not to damage surrounding wildlife while concentrating on composing their shot.
Be conscious of where you anchor - prevent your anchor from damaging reefs or other fragile habitats, where possible by choosing a suitable patch of bare seabed, within or to the edge of these areas. Use fixed buoys whenever available, or avoid using an anchor altogether where feasible. Encourage dive operators and authorities to install fixed buoys at popular dive sites to avoid damage from repetitive anchoring.
Take only enough food for your own needs, and ensure that any shellfish are at least the minimum size and are not carrying eggs. SCUBA divers should not use spearguns. Ensure you comply with any local regulations regarding fishing.
Respect marine reserves, whether voluntary or statutory, as refuges for wildlife, thereby allowing species to thrive undisturbed and to them to restock surrounding areas.
When booking a diving holiday, enquire about the dive operator’s environmental policy and whether they support conservation activities and brief their divers on preventing environmental damage.
Be sensitive in your interactions with any marine life to avoid causing stress, and be aware that feeding wild animals can disrupt natural behaviour patterns and can upset the ecological balance between species.
Resist the temptation to take live specimens on your dives, and avoid buying souvenirs that are made from marine creatures such as corals, sponges, shells or turtles.
When dolphins or whales are in the vicinity, avoid driving your boat directly towards them, and avoid any sudden changes of direction or speed; let them approach you if they wish to. Keep at least 100 metres away from seal resting places and bird nesting areas.
Avoid leaving behind any litter or pollution.
Consider adding some extra purpose to your diving by attending marine life identification courses or by participating in recording schemes or research and survey projects, or by enjoying conservation oriented holiday in the UK or abroad.
Divers and non-divers alike can help to maintain healthy seas by taking positive action in their daily lives and in their purchasing and investment choices to minimise their own personal impact on the environment. Much of the pollution that is generated on land eventually reaches the sea, whether leached through the ground or put directly into the drains or into rivers.
Try to buy fish that come from fisheries that are committed to sustainable, non-destructive fishing practices, and to minimising by-catch through use of appropriate fishing gear. Boycott Chinese restaurants that sell shark fin soup - the rest of the animal is often discarded, and sharks are sometimes even returned to the sea still alive after their fins have been removed.
Minimise your use of garden pesticides, use them carefully and only if absolutely necessary, and use only those products that are biodegradable, and are effective without containing high levels of toxic chemicals.
Dispose of waste oils (from vehicles and even from cooking) at recycling centres, rather than into the drains. Domestic oil is a significant contributor to the amount of oil found in the oceans, even when compared with oil tanker spills!
Minimise the use of washing powders and detergents, and try to use those, which are readily biodegradable, and do not contain high levels of nitrates and phosphates. These can unnaturally raise nutrient levels, upsetting the balance of the ecosystems near to where waste water is discarded into rivers and the sea. Use water sparingly, wherever you are, but particularly in tourist areas where local resources can be put under great pressure and waste systems unable to cope.
Bag and bin nappies, sanitary wastes, condoms and cotton buds, rather than flushing them down the toilet. Many beaches bear the unsightly and unhealthy signs of inadequate sewage systems unable to cope with these items.
Minimise the amount of long lasting waste you generate by choosing products that require little packaging, and use environmentally degradable materials. Re-use or recycle as much waste as possible, and help to reduce the amount of litter, which makes its way onto, beaches around the world.
Avoid plastic multi-pack holders when possible, or take care to break them up to prevent birds, fish and mammals from getting caught in them, and subsequently often dying.
Consider joining and supporting marine conservation organisations. There are many organisations, which focus their attention on different groups of species, or different conservation issues.
Last, but not least, enthuse about your diving, and the marine wildlife that you see, to encourage a respect for the marine environment amongst the general public.
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