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Don't take home live animals from the ocean.
© Dan Wagner |
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As a swimmer or diver:
• Enjoy diving on the reef without touching or bumping into it. Control your flippers and snorkels. Even the lightest contact can hurt sensitive polyps.
• Wear a float coat so you can adjust gear without standing on or sitting on coral. Avoid contact with the ocean bottom, where fragile organisms can live. Try not to kick up sand, which can smother reefs.
• Take home photographs and memories instead of seashells. Don't remove marine specimens; most captured tropical fish die within a year. All coral is protected. It is against the law to collect, harvest or sell Florida corals in state and adjacent federal waters.
• Please don't feed the fish; it disrupts their natural habits.
If these rules are obeyed, one of the most serious threats to coral reefs--direct human contact--will no longer be a problem. Moreover, we will be able to preserve what we have left of the coral reefs, and to keep the incredible experience of swimming around a reef available to future generations.
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