How to save the coral reefs of Talamanca, Caño Island, Costa Rica and the world.
Stop touching and kicking them. Do not give your money to dive shops that touch reef or hunt on Scuba. Seems simple but the fact is all the dive sites at Caño Island Biological Reserve, a forest and marine conservation area 12 nautical miles or 22 kilometers, offshore of Drake Bay, Osa peninsula, are heavily damaged by scuba divers. The same is true for the ridiculously over used dive sites in front of Punta Uva, the most diver damaged sites on Costa Rica´s Caribbean.
There are still too many dive guides who not only fail to prevent their clients from touching and damaging coral but carelessly set a bad example themselves.
When you shop for your dive shop, ask them if they will assure that all guides will take great care with the marine life that grows on the bottom. Report careless guides who allow touching directly to the guards at the ranger stations and to the administrator and owner of the dive operation and your hotel. Also there are reports that one dive shop on the Talamanca coast hunts with Scuba inside the National Wildlife Refuge. If you see your dive guide, anywhere in Costa Rica hunt or take lobster on SCUBA, demand your money back, report them to local hotels and authorities and tell the story on the internet. Hunting while free diving, the only sustainable form of dive hunting, is legal outside of protected areas.
Many people do not know that the Pacific bottom is just as delicate as a Caribbean reef. Even if you cannot see coral there could be a wide assortment of life becoming established on rock. You should not grab the bottom. You should master buoyancy control before you come to scuba Caño Island and demand that the people you dive with are ready to help you observe and protect the coral, not destroy it.
Costa Cetacea guide and PADI scuba diving instructor Shawn Larkin has dived the Osa and Talamanca for over two decades and says, “Caño Island is a terrible place to learn how to dive. Between quickly changing currents, visibility and temperatures, delicate and easily damaged bottom life, and far from medical help remoteness, Caño, like Cocos Island National is best enjoyed by advanced divers. I would guess between 30 and 50 percent of scuba students drop out. There are thousands of calm, easy places to learn how to dive in swimming pool like conditions where you will not hurt coral, like Manzanillo. Learn to dive in one of these places, master buoyancy control, and them come see the incredible scuba diving of Caño Island, or just come free dive and snorkel.”
2009 Copyright Shawn Larkin www.CostaCetacea.com. All rights reserved.
