I Knowing the environment

Before diving

• Get informed about ecology of the more common species you are going to meet.
• Know how to identify the threatened and the protected species.

While diving

• Use submersible identification charts to recognize the sea species.
• Use submersible notepads to draw and note your observations and questions.

After diving

• Ask your dive master about your observations based on the drawings and notes taken while diving.
• Share your observations with the other divers you’ve been diving with.
• Ask your diving school for guide charts and books about sea life, compare your observations with these. Get information from marine biologists.
• Report your observations in a note-book. Thus you will be able to notice differences between the environments and take note of the changes in the population through the seasons and the evolution of a specific place through the passing of time.

II. Reducing your impact on the environment

Before diving

• Do not throw anything overboard, including cigarette filters.
• Pay the greatest attention to the advice of your diving guide about the most fragile species.
• Adapt your lead weights to be not too heavy.

While diving

• Avoid shuffling the launching area too much. If possible, go diving from a sand or a pebble beach, less “sensitive” than a sea grass habitat, corals or seaweed zone.
• Check your buoyancy to avoid scraping the bottom.
• Check your equipment to prevent the manometer and the spare pressure reducing valve from dragging the bottom.
• Be careful not to hit the fixed plants and animals.
• Avoid hooking or laying yourself onto the bottom, to avoid destroying the fixed animals or plants.
• Do not feed the animals.
• Do not break or collect anything
• Put stones back after having moved them.
• Do not chase after big animals : dolphins, tortoises or whale sharks. Take your time. Stay quiet, they will feel confident. Let them come to you. Do not touch them.
• Avoid breathing out under the overhanging rocks colonized by fixed animals.
• Use your lights without dazzling the animals.
• Take pictures avoiding too many flashes, stressing the fixed animals.
• Pick up plastic bags and things found while diving.

After diving

• Bring back your waste.
• Keep your used batteries and put them in a recycling container. Bring them home if you are on holidays in a country where there is no selective sorting for waste.
• Use reusable plates, glasses and cutlery instead of disposable plastic ones.
• Use biodegradable soap and dish soap.
• Use the rinsing tank for your diving equipment.
• Save fresh water by staying a shorter time under the shower.

III. Protecting and taking actions to protect

Before diving

• Prefer diving schools and tour operators that take actions to protect the environment.
• Find out about the actions of sea life protection taken by your diving school.
• Prefer diving schools which use rinsing tanks and showers with a controlled flow.
• Support an ethic charter. Let people know about the “International guidelines for responsible diver”.
• Ask your family and relatives to respect environment.
• Share your experience and your knowledge with parents and friends to let them enjoy and respect the environment.

While diving

• Respect your environment and, through your behaviour, become a model.
• Follow the instructions of the diving director.

After diving

• Require that your services providers save fresh water as much as possible.

Encourage the other divers not to waste it.

• Ask for dustbins and ashtrays on the boat and around your diving school.
• Do not buy souvenirs ripped from the sea : shark teeth, corals, shellfish, tortoise shell etc.. Encourage the other divers to boycott them
• Refuse all useless wrapping.