Saturday 30 May 2009

Egyptians know how to care for their reefs

Recently I stumbled upon regulations by the Egyptian Chamber of Diving and Water Sports. It is nice to know that some nations know how important it is to protect their reefs and know how to enforce that. These regulations also seem to try to improve diving operations safety. At the moment I'm not sure how many diving injuries where reported in Egypt and how many of them happened during deep recreational dives, but requiring operators to limit maximum depth to 30 meters seems to be reasonable, especially with all East European divers going to Egypt. I wrote that because, unfortunately, these divers are know to notoriously exceed depth limits set by their certifications. Of course other nationalities also do that, but not as often.

What I like the most about aforementioned regulations, is the ban on Discover Scuba Diving dives on the most spectacular reefs in the Sharm el Sheikh region, including Ras Mohammad and Tiran Strait. As for other dive courses - the possible dive sites have also been limited. Any instructor or divemaster knows what a diver who is still developing his buoyancy control can do to a reef...