Imagine this…your guests have arrived and they’re excited to get underwater for their first dive. Everything’s a go! You’ve confirmed diving qualifications, paperwork has been completed, gear set up and checked and dive briefing complete. Everyone piles onto the boat, eager to get underwater and you head out to your first dive site. On the way, a couple of guests have been smoking and absent-mindedly flick their cigarette butts over the side of the boat; another is eating something and dumps the wrapper onto the floor and the fourth is slathering on chemical sunscreen. At the dive site everyone gets kitted up and jumps in. Once at depth there’s a slight current and you notice one guest is colliding with the seafloor, grabbing onto anything in sight for stability. Another is so engrossed with their attempt to get numerous photos (flash on!) of an amazing frog fish that they’re completely unaware how much they’re affecting visibility by kicking up sand in the process. Not to mention the fact corals are now being smothered by the stirred up sand. It’s not quite the calm, enjoyable dive you’d hoped for! You cringe as you see a sea fan being broken by a loose, trailing regulator. But what can you do?!
The majority of (if not all) divers are passionate about the ocean and would never intentionally destroy the underwater world they love to explore. Yet, divers are capable of causing lasting damage to coral reefs – for example, by coming into contact with the reef or touching marine life. As those on the front lines, dive professionals are in a prime position to inspire, educate and create change in their fellow divers, but it can be hard to know where to start. Until now, no free resources existed to equip and support dive guides to protect the reefs on which their businesses depend. .
The diving industry is a booming business with over one million new divers being certified every year. Reef-based tourism activities generate $19 billion on an annual basis, drawing visitors to over 100 countries and territories around the world. But these businesses depend on healthy reefs to attract those customers and keep them coming. Coral reefs are facing many widespread threats; such as overfishing, climate change and severe bleaching events. Protecting coral reefs from the impacts of an increasing number of divers makes them more resilient to these global threats and, therefore, has never been more important.
Faced with this challenge, The Reef-World Foundation has distilled its 10 years’ experience coordinating the Green Fins initiative among the global dive community to create a-one-of-a-kind, free online training course: the Green Fins Dive Guide e-Course. The course was specifically developed to build on the existing knowledge, experience and passion of local dive guides by empowering them with greater environmental knowledge and tools to better manage their guests.
The course provides dive professionals with three modules of easy-to-follow content followed by corresponding tests on an intuitive, user-friendly platform:
- Module 1: an introduction to coral reef biology, the Green Fins approach, why it is imperative we protect reefs, and how guides can use Green Fins resources, such as posters and guidelines, to support their day to day work.
- Module 2: management techniques above water, such as how to prepare and plan an environmentally friendly dive and maximising the opportunity of an effective environmental pre-dive briefing to encourage guests to limit their environmental impact.
- Module 3: how to confidently lead a dive using positive role model behaviour and follow through with underwater corrections – such as adjusting buoyancy – followed by an explanation and positive reinforcement once the dive is over. Research has shown divers who receive environmental information in pre-dive briefings coupled with interventions underwater cause significantly less damage to coral.1,2
The plight of our oceans is no longer a secret and more people are choosing environmentally responsible businesses as a way of contributing to positive change. Dive guides are in an optimum position to directly use their experience and knowledge to implement behaviour changes that support healthy reefs and encourage others to do the same. This further training for dive guides can help to instil customers with a greater sense of confidence and result in higher client satisfaction, more tips as well as helping to make a dive guide more employable. It can also be offered as an accompanying certification to those undertaking Divemaster courses. The dive industry is a close-knit community and Green Fins Members and certified guides also benefit from support from the Green Fins network as well as promotion through the ever-expanding Green Fins community and its supporters.
While advising or correcting a customer might seem daunting, carrying out the Green Fins Dive e-Course can help to bring a new level of confidence when liaising with customers. In turn, this can help create better, more informed divers who will take their new-found knowledge and skills with them to whichever reef they visit – meaning the dive described above can be a thing of the past!
Taking the Green Fins Dive Guide e-Course is completely free. Users who would to proudly display their completion certificate (to attract environmentally-minded customers) have the option of paying (£19/$24) for a certificate at the end of the course. All funds go towards The Reef-World Foundation’s vital work to protect coral reefs.
By Rebecca Gillham
- Barker, N.H. and Roberts, C.M., 2004. Scuba diver behaviour and the management of diving impacts on coral reefs. Biological Conservation, 120(4), pp.481-489.
- Krieger, J.R. and Chadwick, N.E., 2013. Recreational diving impacts and the use of pre-dive briefings as a management strategy on Florida coral reefs. Journal of coastal conservation, 17(1), pp.179-189.