Reef closures helping fish stocks, says scientist December 12, 2005
Posted by Andy Carroll in : Conservation, News , add a comment
Good news for scuba divers as a scientist says reductions in fishing along the Barrier Reef have increased fish stocks.
From ABC News
The scientist at the head of an 11-year study into the effects of line fishing on the Great Barrier Reef says the policy of area closures to allow spawning has been very successful.
Professor Bruce Mapstone from the Cooperative Research Centre for the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (CRC) says they undertook one of the world’s biggest fishing experiments to get a better idea of the effects of both commercial and recreational line fishing.
New Law opens Greece up to Scuba Divers, but may fall foul of Scuba Looters December 7, 2005
Posted by Andy Carroll in : Conservation, News, Travel , add a commentGreek Parliament last month passed a law which now opens up the Greek oceans to scuba divers for the first time. Although this is great for the diving industry in Greece there are fears that divers such as Brad Sheard and Leigh Bishop, divers who boast about their private collections of artefacts looted from sunken wrecks around the world, may be tempted to travel to Greece to collect artefacts which so far have been protected due to the restrictions on scuba diving.
From the CDNN report;
“There are treasures in our seas,” says Dimitris Athanasoulis, president of the Archaeologists’ Association. “This will open the floodgates to smugglers. It’ll serve to encourage them at a time when evidence shows the trafficking of antiquities is on the rise.”
There is a saying I like about scuba diving ‘Take only Memories, Leave only Bubbles’.
Scuba Diving Expert warns Wal-Mart site may harm caves November 27, 2005
Posted by Andy Carroll in : CaveDiving, Conservation , add a commentALACHUA - The cattle didn’t know what to make of Cindy Butler as she roamed on their pasture Friday listening to headphones attached to a gray disc.
Butler followed the sound of an electronic hum as it grew in intensity, leading her to the edge of a 80-foot-wide depression in the ground.
The headphones were picking up the sound from a magnetic device carried by cave scuba divers nearly 200 feet below the surface. Butler will present the findings to Wal-Mart as it moves forward with plans to build a store on the 31-acre property on U.S. 441 near Interstate 75.
“I don’t have an issue with them building on here - as long as they don’t build on the cave,” she said.
Butler is a certified cave-scubadiving guide who leads expeditions into the nearby Mill Creek Sink. Mill Creek feeds into the sink, its waters being carried through a series of underground caves that eventually lead six miles away to Hornsby Spring.
She said the fragile cave system could be damaged by Wal-Mart - especially a fissure in the rock below the proposed store. Scuba divers brought the magnetic device to the fissure, so Butler could document its location above ground.
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