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The idea of conservation has become widely accepted in the last few decades as more and more people become aware of the need to conserve the environment. Unfortunately, even in these enlightened times to many people the oceans are
"Out of sight and out of mind"
Land based conservation, being highly visible, has always been given priority and the lions share of the available funds. People have tended to associate sea conservation with "...Stop the Shark fishing..." or "...Save the Whale..." activities, as these majestic creatures are powerful symbols for the media to get the message across.
All is not lost however, as the public are becoming increasingly aware of the impact human activity is having on the environment as a whole. Risks of over-fishing; over-exploitation of resources; pollution due to contaminants; and the possible environmental consequences of run-off from agricultural land all provide headlines in our newspapers or become the subject of documentaries on television. Sea conservation is no longer just about 'Saving the Whale", but has broadened to concerns about habitat and ecosystem protection as well as larger environmental issues.
As our knowledge of the seas; and the impact of human activity continues to increase so to has the challenge and scope of conservation. A simple definition of sea conservation is 'the protection, maintenance and restoration of marine life, ecosystems and physical features.'
Our members have witnessed the decline of marine life and the increasing amounts of rubbish in and around our coastal waters. Most of us remember the time when you were guaranteed to see large fish or Lobsters on every dive but recently whilst chatting to some of our newer divers we were shocked to discover that most of them had never seen a Lobster, Conger Eel, Cuttlefish and much of the other sea life we’ve had the privilege to observe in their natural habitat. Over the past year a few of our members have been monitoring the decline via the SeaSearch program, our instructor Glyn has a webpage dedicated to the Seasearch activities in the South Wales area. Many of us feel its about time we did our bit to improve things for future generations of divers. We realise that 20-30 people aren’t going to have a great impact on the enormous problems facing the marine environment but every little helps. Hopefully our efforts will inspire, or shame, other divers into action. The exact numbers escape me at the moment but the diving community runs into hundreds of thousands in the UK alone, if only half of them spent a hour litter picking after diving or collected rubbish during their dive then the overall effect would be significant.
The sea conservation club is still in its infancy but 1st June 2008 saw 20 of us collect 38 full sacks and quite a few large items of rubbish off Rhossili beach.