• Open Water Wreck Diving: Swimming over and around the wreck.
• Limited Penetration Wreck Diving: Entering parts of the wreck while always remaining in the light zone and in view of a clear exit route.
• Full Penetration Wreck Diving: Beyond the light zone. Divers must have extensive training and proper equipment. Like cave diving, full penetration is the most advanced and dangerous form of wreck diving.

Limited penetration of the Ophelia Brian wreck off Miami Beach

As previously stated, the Active Divers Association has not issued an official position on wreck penetration, However, as long as wreck-penetration training has been completed and proper equipment is used, ADA respects each diver’s decision-making process on whether or not to attempt a wreck penetration dive. Most recognized agencies offer wreck diving courses at one or more of the levels listed above. It is imperative that divers receive proper training before penetrating any part of a wreck.

SCUBA Tech Philippines lists its “Top Ten Wreck Diving Tips For Safer Penetration Dives”.³

1. Get properly trained, not just certified.
2. Perfect your foundational SCUBA skills first.
3. Don’t stress your task loading.
4. Respect your comfort zone.
5. Guard against complacency.
6. Don’t short-cut with equipment.
7. Dive as a team.
8. Practice and rehearse.
9. Understand and mitigate all risks.
10. Be a disciplined diver

As divers we responsible for our own safety as well as the safety of our dive buddy and/or dive team. Each type of dive has its own list of safety concerns, whether shallow openwater or advanced. Divers must know the limits of their training and gear and stick to them to minimize risks to themselves and others. ADA encourages you to get out there and dive and explore the wonderful underwater world, but most importantly to safely enjoy your experience.

1. “Penetrating Questions” http://www.scubadiving.com/training/basic-skills/penetrating-questions
2. “DAN Annual Diving Report 201-2015 Edition: A report on 2010-2013 data on diving fatalities, injuries, and incidents[Internet]”. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK344439/
3. “Top Ten Wreck Diving Tips For Safer Penetration Dives” http://scubatechphilippines.com/scuba_blog/top-ten-wreck-diving-tips-safer-penetration-dives/

Dive Gear I Want to See Invented

Here is my first contribution. To begin with, I figured that in order to come up with a new invention, I would have to identify a scuba problem that needs to be solved. Here’s one: Did you ever try to spear a fish (or take a picture of one), but the only way to get a view of the fish is to stand on your head? Then, invariably after you get into that inverted position, the current or weight imbalance tilts your legs and requires you to wiggle around to get back into position. How about a sea scooter as a solution? I know that there are large devices with battery-powered propellers that can pull a diver along underwater. I guess you could use one to keep still in the water as well as to move around. My quick research showed such devices from a $300 Sea Doo to a $5,000 Submerge Minnus DPV. But scooters require hands; hands that could be used to hold the speargun/camera/lobster bag. That will not work. Well then, how about a mini-scooter mounted horizontally on the outside of your fins? Like the side thrusters ships use to position into a dock, these small props can straighten out the current-tilted diver with just a wiggle of the toes (or some other method of control that does not require hands).

Now when you hear that this has been invented, tell the inventor to name it after me, please.

The main reason? Fewer large-bodied and predator fish to pee nutrients into the water, the study found.

"Part of the reason coral reefs work is because animals play a big role in moving nutrients around," said lead author Jacob Allgeier, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.

"Fish hold a large proportion, if not most of the nutrients in a coral reef in their tissue, and they're also in charge of recycling them. If you take the big fish out, you're removing all of those nutrients from the ecosystem."

Paper co-authors Abel Valdivia at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco and Courtney Cox at Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, Florida, surveyed 143 fish species at 110 sites across 43 Caribbean coral reefs that varied in the amount of fishing pressure sustained -- ranging from marine preserves that banned all fishing to heavily fished reefs where large predator fish are almost gone.

The researchers found that reefs with more large, predator fish had healthy levels of nutrients, while reefs depleted of large fish had nearly 50 percent fewer nutrients, including phosphorous and nitrogen, essential to their survival.

"This study is useful to understand alternative ways fishing is affecting coral reef ecosystems," Allgeier said.

The researchers determined that, despite the substantial reduction in fish-mediated nutrients, fishing didn't substantially reduce the number of fish species present. Instead, the large reductions in fish pee were driven by the reduction of large-bodied fish and predator fish such as grouper, snapper or barracuda that occurs through selective fishing practices.

"Simply stated, fish biomass in coral reefs is being reduced by fishing pressure. If biomass is shrinking, there are fewer fish to pee," Allgeier said.

Phosphorus in fish pee and nitrogen excreted through their gills are important nutrients for coral reefs to grow. In many reef communities, fish will take shelter in and around coral during the day -- peeing out valuable nutrients -- then forage for prey in and around the reef by night.

A Science paper in the 1980s showed that coral reefs where fish were present grew at more than double the speed of reefs where fish were absent. It was this study, undertaken by now emeritus research professor Judith Meyer at the University of Georgia, that inspired Allgeier to figure out why fish help coral reefs grow.

Coral reefs are the very definition of a delicate ecosystem. They are highly productive in terms of the biodiversity they support, but there aren't a lot of nutrients to spare. Reefs operate on what scientists call a "tight" nutrient cycle, meaning there must be an efficient transfer of nutrients for coral to grow. This cycle is largely controlled by fish, which hold nutrients in their tissue and then excrete them through their gills and urine.

Allgeier spent four years measuring the amount of nutrients in fish pee and fish tissue to eventually build a massive dataset that tracks fish size and nutrient output and the amount they store in their tissue.

As a graduate student, Allgeier's kitchen on Abaco Island in the Bahamas became his lab, and he caught hundreds of live fish, put them in plastic bags for half an hour, then measured the nutrients in the water before and after. He found that nitrogen output varied consistently with body size among all fish, and that carnivorous fish would pee more phosphorus than smaller herbivores.

Now, with these data serving as the basis for their models, Allgeier and collaborators can estimate the total amount of nutrient output from fish by knowing the species and body size of fish in a coral reef community.

"It's remarkable how robust the models are just from knowing fish size and species," he added.

Coral reefs continue to decline in the Caribbean and worldwide, but curbing fishing practices that target large predator fish could help reefs recover, Allgeier said.

The researchers expect this relationship between fish and coral exists in other reefs around the world. Allgeier is currently working with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to collect data next on fish pee in tropical Pacific Ocean reefs, essentially building upon the data collection Allgeier did as a graduate student.

The citizen groups don’t simply start off by collecting data though. Every organization that opens its research to public assistance has its own set of guidelines that citizen scientists must adhere to. These can include requiring the public to complete coursework or become proficient with the tools necessary for proper data collection. Once they have shown an understanding of the research, these new citizen scientists can assist in research projects for the organization they applied to work with.

Frequently Asked Questions

Our Citizen Science Project

We are on a mission to collect a large database of information about the survivorship of coral outplants on reefs in the Florida Keys. To increase the amount of data, we have developed and piloted our own citizen science project that will do just that. The Coral Restoration Foundation Citizen Science Project was developed in 2016 and launched June 4 at our Coralpalooza event to celebrate World Ocean’s Day. Participants monitored the health of corals on Carysfort Reef and submitted their data to us to begin the compilation of a large data set that will record the survivorship and growth of our coral clusters outplanted to designated restoration sites.

Coral Restoration Foundation citizen scientists can be either snorkelers or divers. Citizen scientists perform monitoring of outplanted staghorn and elkhorn coral clusters on local reefs and submit their data to us. This data will help us begin to touch on answers to questions like “Which reef habitat has greater coral survivorship?” or “Are there differences in genotype performances?” and much more. With thousands of corals outplanted throughout the Florida Keys, mass coral monitoring by a team of enthusiastic volunteer scientists is hugely beneficial to answering some of these questions.

To learn how you can train to become a Coral Restoration Foundation Citizen Scientist, email Kayla Ripple, at Kayla@coralrestoration.org