Making an Impact for Our Oceans
SCUBAPRO has a long history working with divers who are in the field helping to preserve our ocean and all who depend on it. This includes research, education, advocacy, and tireless work above and below the water line.
We asked three Global Deep Elite divers to share one threat affecting our ocean and marine life, and how they’re each working to create positive change. We’re inspired and we hope you are too!
Sandra Bessudo
Location: Colombia
What is your concern for the future of our ocean?
I have several concerns about the future of our healthy oceans. Overfishing and illegal fishing, destructive fishing gear such as trawling or long lines, pollution, and the loss of ecosystems and species are my constant concern.
How are you involved in working to address this concern?
For more than 30 years, I have been working hard on the creation and expansion of marine protected areas. I have also worked to strengthen public policies, education and responsible diving, marine research, and constant monitoring in order to have more information that allows the government to make the best decisions for conservation. Diving allows me to monitor the species and ecosystems that we are studying.
How can divers get involved and where can they find more information?
Divers can support us by traveling with us during the Citizen Science trips that we have organized for more than 20 years. Divers will learn, support us in collecting information, and apply good diving practices.
Information can be found on our website: www.fundacionmalpelo.org
Edgardo Ochoa
Location: Alexandria, Virginia
What is a concern you have for the future of our ocean?
My concern is that important and factual information about the complicated state of our oceans does not reach a massive amount of people. To this day, most people are still ignoring terms like global warming, plastic pollution, overfishing, etc.
How are you involved in working to address this concern?
I am working along with governments, dive professionals and oceans advocates on ways to establish sound relationships, bridges if you will, between the diving community and the collective need to protect our marine ecosystems.
I believe contemplative diving is not an option anymore. We have more informed divers than we used to, but it is necessary that people see the bigger picture and understand the complex connections of all the components in this game. Ecology is like a Jenga™ where every piece is important to maintain the balance, while the connection among the pieces also maintains the structure and the beauty.
How can scuba divers get involved and where can they find more information?
Divers are environmentally conscious and, in many cases, educate themselves on favorite marine subjects like big fish, sea turtles, marine mammals, coral reefs, and nudibranchs. I encourage divers to go beyond the education and start looking for interpretation, to focus on the function more than the form and connect every single piece to understand how ALL living creatures have a role and are connected. There is no better place to establish connections than underwater.
Edgardo works with Conservation International.
Dr. Austin Gallagher
Location: Washington DC
What is a concern you have for the future of our ocean?
My biggest concern would be accepting the notion that all hope is lost, because there are many success stories out there and we still have an opportunity to restore our oceans to abundance.
How are you involved in working to address this concern?
To help restore our oceans to abundance, I am involved in several high-impact marine conservation projects being done through the nonprofit research institute Beneath the Waves. To promote the recovery of large sharks, I am evaluating the benefits of large-scale marine protected areas on the movements and behavior of sharks in the Caribbean. Working across six territories and countries, I am tracking the residency of these species to determine how we can sustain, strengthen, and expand current protective models. In addition to tagging the sharks, I spent a lot of time on scuba installing and maintaining large arrays of underwater receivers that listen for the pings of the sharks as they swim by.
The discovery and conservation of key marine habitats, particularly seagrasses and mangroves, is also helping us understand the services these ecosystems provide, and what is needed to properly value and protect them moving forward. Seagrasses are highly productive carbon sinks, meaning they sequester and store large amounts of atmospheric carbon in their soils. They are a nature-based solution to climate change, and to evaluate how much carbon is stored in the seafloor, I dive down and deploy sediment cores. We then bring these cores up to the surface, slice them, and bring them back to our lab to estimate how much carbon is in each sample. By taking a top-down and bottom-up approach, I am working to understand and protect some of the most important species and habitats in our oceans.
How can scuba divers get involved and where can they find more information?
To get involved, please reach out to us via the contact form at our website (www.beneaththewaves.org), or drop us a DM on Instagram. Our team would love to hear from you!