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Protecting
Our Coral Reefs
What Can We Do?
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Learn more about reefs and other marine
life. Your dives will be all the more enjoyable.
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Help keep the reef clean. Always take
your own litter away, and also pick up other trash from the
beach or reef.
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Get Involved with organizations and
groups that are involved in the protection and conservation
of coral reefs and other marine life. You can actively participate
in projects or give financial support with a donation.
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Take care of the reefs, not just for
yourself, but so your children too will be able to enjoy them.
A
Diver's Code
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Don't touch corals, rest on them or
kick them. Corals are living animals and are easily damaged
even by gentle handling. Don't wear gloves, so you can feel
what you are touching.
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Avoid kicking up the sand. It spoils
the visibility for you and other visitors and damages corals
and other reef organisms when it settles.
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Observe Collecting and Spearfishing Laws
Many reefs are already badly depleted of medium to large size
fishes. If laws are in effect for an area, it is because numbers
are threatened.
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Leave all corals and reef animals where they are. Corals are the "building blocks"
of the reef and grow slowly. Even small pieces are many years
old. Lobsters and shells have become rare because too many people
are taking them. Don't kill sea urchins to feed the fishes.
Sea urchins too have become scarce, due to a disease, and are
only just beginning to recover.
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Divers, make sure you are properly weighted. Sign up in a buoyancy control course
and keep practicing what you have learned. Always be aware of
the fragility of the coral reef.
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Boat owners, never anchor on corals,
they are easily broken or damaged by anchors and you may break
off corals that are hundreds of years old. Tie up to a mooring
buoy or anchor carefully in sand or rubble patches.
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Take only pictures, leave only bubbles.-
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