Scuba Diving Can Increase Awareness on Ocean Conservation

By being a Scuba Diver, you have the privilege to explore the 70 percent of the natural world that is water. That can be the vast oceans, rivers, lakes, creeks. Therefore by being a diver you have automatically become the underwater world’s ambassador, because when you dive you see what is going on in our oceans and inevitably see the changes that are happening in oceans across the globe. There are many factors which affects the changing of our ocean, of the coral reefs more specifically. There’s global warming- that causes coral bleaching, overfishing, destructive fishing practices, pollution, discarded fish nets, coastal developments. Many people aren’t aware of this because they can not see what happens or the changes underwater, but scuba divers can.
An example of how scuba divers can have a great influence in ocean conservation can be noted in today’s many popular dive spots one of which is Raja Ampat, its waters are home to a staggering variety of marine life and has considerably the richest marine diversity in the world. One of Raja Ampat's websites (http://www.rajaampat.org/) shows a survey conducted by The Nature Conservancy has confirmed that Raja Ampat has got 537 corals species –which is 75 percent of all the corals known- and 1,074 fish species. A few years ago the fish and coral reefs in this area were overexploited by either overfishing by fishnets, or using explosions on the coral reefs. But as Raja Ampat grows more and more popular among scuba divers around the world as one of- if not, the best dive spots in the world, the awareness for conservation has also been increasing rapidly. This shows how scuba diving can raise awareness for Ocean Conservation. As what Baba Dioum, a well known Senegalese conservationist said, “In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”

Name: Adisty Mediani
ID: 1200962271