Diving Thoughts

According to the BBC, Palau is intending to create the world’s first shark sanctuary by banning all commercial shark fishing in its waters. Johnson Toribiong, Palau’s President, announced this on Friday at the UN General Assembly. It will protect 600,000 sq km of ocean.

Palau gains a lot of income from their tourism, a mainstay of which is scuba diving. When I was there several years ago, I found it had a very high concentration of sharks, primarily grey reef sharks.

There are questions as to whether Palau will be able to enforce the ban as they only have one patrol boat. According to the BBC’s report, a recent aerial survey found 70 boats fishing in the area, most of them apparently illegally. However the fishermen still need to land their catches, so with improved monitoring, and international cooperation in tracking and sharing information on illegal fishing boats, perhaps things need not seem so bleak.

Palau is also intending to review its current position on whaling, where it has sided with countries which are pro-hunting, such as Japan. The President is planning bilateral meeting with Japan to discuss it based on the most recent scientific data. He has said that he wants Palau’s position to take a position that “will not lead to the depletion and extinction of whales”.

Perhaps this new shark sanctuary could make Palau an even more attractive destination for divers.

You can get more information from the BBC’s website.

Last Thursday SCDC organised a talk by Nico Zurcher about the extent to which smaller less noticeable plastics affect our oceans and environment. It was a fascinating talk based on some of the research that Nico did examining Hong Kong beaches for his MSc.

Following that, Doug Woodring showed us some photos from his recent trip to the “Plastic Vortex” as part of Project Kaisei. He also sent us the link to this YouTube video…

In June Dave Watson was convicted of manslaughter in Queensland. This followed the death of his wife in October 2003 on a diving holiday which was their honeymoon. The Queensland coroner felt that it was likely that Mr. Watson had turned his wife’s air off and held her under water until she died and felt there was a strong case to charge him with murder. Instead Mr. Watson pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was jailed for 4.5 years.

The Alabama Attorney General has said that he plans to bring a murder charge against Mr. Watson when he returns to the US after serving his sentence in Australia. There is a bit of a legal grey area, as the US has a “double jeopardy” rule which prevents an individual for being tried twice for the same crime. There is an exception if the crime is committed overseas and the country in question does not press charges. In this case the Attorney General is arguing that even though it is the same incident, the Queensland prosecutors didn’t bring a murder charge.

There’s more information on Divernet’s website.

World paddleboard champion (what’s a paddleboard?), Jamie Mitchell, was being filmed for a documentary when a pod of humpback whales began playing around him. There were about 4 whales, presumably migrating to warmer waters around northern Australia for calving.

You can find out more from Times Online’s website, where the above photo comes from.

When we think of entanglement hazards in Hong Kong, we’re normally thinking about fishing nets, but a diver in Wellington got trapped in weeds at Owhiro Bay earlier today. He’s now in a serious condition in Wellington hospital.

There is more in the New Zealand Herald.

Scientists working in the Galapagos have found 3 new species of coral and one that had been thought to be extinct. The area they were researching was near Wolf and Darwin islands, which are in the north-east of the island archipelago. This area has apparently not been studied in detail since the 1970s.

The three new coral species are from the genera Hydrozoanthus, Parazoanthus and Antipathozoanthus. In addition, Honeycomb coral (Gardineroseris planulata) had been thought to have been wiped out in 1997/98 by the last major El Nino event but several colonies were found.

El Nino events raise sea water temperatures around the Galapagos up to say 30C., which can lead to the coral polyps ejecting the symbiotic algae that live within them. This leads to the  coral dying and the resulting bleached reefs are very obvious. This recent research suggests that the algae may be adapting to warmer temperatures, which could be a small piece of good news for reefs everywhere.

The above picture is from the Guardian, and you can read more from their website.

On Thursday the Royal Geographical Society of Hong Kong is presenting a lecture by Dr. Alan Knight, who has spent nearly 20 years in sustainable development in the fields of retail, global finance and advising government. He specialises in working with business and policy makers to ensure they can still be profitable while also being sustainable from a perspective of the planet. So not anti-business, foaming at the mouth type of environmentalist.

The talk will be at the Pacific Place Conference Centre, 5/F, One Pacific Place, Admiralty, with drinks from 6:30pm and the lecture starting at 7:30pm. It will cost HKD 100  for members and HKD 150 for non-members. There is more information on the RGS Hong Kong website.

The BBC has some good photos of leopard seals in South Georgia (for any Argentinians who may not be familiar with the name, that’s “South Georgia”!). The photographs were taken at Bird Island and include one of a leopard seal hunting a duck. You can see the photos here.

Thanks to Wing, who has just forwarded me some information about the Diving, Resort and Travel 2010 Expo, which will be held on 16th – 18th July 2010. It is being supported by the Hong Kong Underwater Association and the Hong Kong Tourism Board. To keep up to date with information on the Expo you can visit their website.

The Guardian has got an interactive map of 10 coral reefs around the world, with a brief description of them and the pressures they are facing as a result of climate change. They reckon you should go and see them before they die.

The map is here.

The BBC have some great photos of some jelly-like animals that were found during submersible dives to the depths in the Arctic. Take a look at the BBC website.

Scuba STAR Network’s air quality survey must be coming to an end soon as it’s for July / August. So here’s a last minute chance to contribute. You can fill in the online survey from their website.