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The Best Holiday Gifts for Scuba Divers

December 17, 2020 by Kurt Kucera

The holidays are around the corner. Therefore, people need to start preparing gifts for scuba diving enthusiasts on their gift list. The gift a person will give to a scuba diver friend will depend on their budget.

Choosing the best holiday gift for scuba divers can be challenging, especially for people who aren’t enthusiastic about scuba diving. Moreover, they are many gifts for scuba divers. Therefore choosing the best one can be confusing. People can find these gifts at local dive shops or online. Here are the best holiday gifts for scuba divers.

Ocean-Themed Jewelry

Scuba divers love the ocean. They enjoy scuba diving and taking photos or videos of marine life. Ocean-themed jewelry such as earrings, bracelets, and necklaces reminds them of ocean life.

If a scuba diver prefers to wear a wet suit instead of a suit, handmade bracelet cuffs with marine life designs can be a good holiday gift for them. Masks, diving helmet cufflinks, and snorkels are also great holiday gifts for a scuba diver.

T-Shirts or Hats

Scuba divers don’t always spend all their time underwater. When they are not Scuba diving, they are probably basking on the beach. Hats help protect their head from sunlight rays, which can be harmful. When people buy PADI gear hats, they somehow help keep plastic out of the ocean. It is because they use recycled plastic to make hats.

A t-shirt is yet another gift a scuba diver would love to receive. Before buying a t-shirt, it is advisable to ask the scuba diver which dive shop they prefer. The t-shirt can have phrases such as “I work well under pressure.”

Books about Sea Creatures and Scuba Diving

Before sending a holiday gift to a scuba diving enthusiast, the sender should consider the diver’s interests. If they enjoy reading books about sea creatures and scuba diving, then such books are the best holiday gifts.

For instance, National Geographic books inspire individuals to love and protect the underwater world. Books about scuba diving can also help them become better scuba divers and safe places to do it.

Scuba Diving Gadgets and Accessories

Thanks to technology, there are several gadgets that individuals can give to scuba divers. It includes a dive torch, GPS devices, underwater cameras, etc.

The above are some holiday gifts for scuba divers. The gifts should be unique and fit their budget range.

Filed Under: Blog, Coral Reefs, Sea Life, Travel Tagged With: Beginner Tips, Belize, Caribbean, Cave Diving, Compressed Air Cylinder System, Conservation, Coral Reefs, Demand Valve, divers, Exhaust Valve, fish rock cave, Florida, Kurt Kucera, Living Reefs, ocean cave, SCUBA, scuba divers, sea life, Sea Turtles, SECORE, Sharks, Ship Wrecks, Tips, travel, traveling, underwater, underwater museum, Vacation

Saving our Earth’s reefs: Is lab-grown coral the answer?

February 2, 2016 by Kurt Kucera

Elkhorn Coral

Our planets coral reef’s are not only beautiful to experience for divers, but they are integral to our underwater ecosystem. They may occupy less than 0.1% of the world’s ocean surface, but they provide a home for at least 25% of all marine species.

Unfortunately, the planet’s coral reefs are diminishing. Coral reef’s are incredibly delicate, and they are currently under threat from a variety of sources including climate change, oceanic acidification, blast fishing, coral mining, overuse of reef resources, and urban/agricultural runoff and water pollution. The world’s reefs are diminishing so fast in fact that some scientists say they could be gone by the middle of this century. In the Caribbean specifically, coral populations have declined an estimated 80 percent over the past forty years.

Scientists around the world are looking to new ways to save our reefs. Their latest effort is in vitro fertilization.

After years of captive breeding, scientists from SECORE have reported that for the first time, they have successfully raised laboratory-bred colonies of coral to sexual maturity in the wild.

Specimens of Elkhorn — a highly endangered reef-building species common to the Caribbean — were reared from gametes collected in the wild, fertilized in vitro, and planted back into the ocean. For marine conservationists, this is a big deal, but certainly not the end of our efforts to save the coral reefs.

Unlike similar reproductive efforts of the past, SECORES latest experiment doesn’t rely on asexual reproduction, which means that in the process of creating new coral, they are also giving these coral their own unique genetic type, increasing genetic diversity. Previously, fragments of adult coral were collected, spawned asexually in nurseries, and then returned to their reef. SECORE’s technique involves catching male and female gametes in the wild and then fertilizing them in the laboratory to raise larger numbers of genetically unique corals. Genetic diversity will be vital to these new corals ability to weather changing environmental challenges.

The process requires some patience, as Elkhorn corals only reproduce once a year in the wild, following the full moon in August. Over the past several breeding cycles, SECORE biologists have used nets to gently collect sperm and eggs as they’re released. The gametes are then brought to a lab and mixed in vitro to produce embryos. After a short period of time in their nursery, thee embryos are then settled into a reef. It isn’t until four years later that these embryos mature enough to reproduce again.

Successes like these are important, but even SECORE is aware that lab-grown coral aren’t going to save the reef’s over night.

“Our techniques can only support natural recovery, which means that conditions have to be appropriate to allow long term survival of outplanted corals,” said SECORE director Dirk Petersen in a statement.

One of the biggest challenges then is making sure conditions can sustain these new coral. Warmer ocean temperatures have been causing massive coral bleaching. Rising acidity levels in the ocean make it harder for corals to secrete and maintain their calcium carbonate exoskeletons. And the addition of chemicals such as oxybenzone (a common compound in sunscreen ) poison them.

If we really want to save our reefs, it’s going to require a lot more than re-populating. We need to be able to give these corals a safe environment to call home.

Filed Under: Coral Reefs Tagged With: Caribbean, Conservation, Coral Reefs, SECORE

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