September 2010 NEWSLETTER
NEW ISO DIVING STANDARDS
New diving standards look set to be issued within the next 12 months, following ISO and EUF (European Underwater Federation) meetings in Vienna, Austria in June. CDWS managing director Zeyad M ElBassel was among the international delegation of diving industry heads who revise and set standards recognised throughout the world.
Among the new ISO standards, which will be required by law by all diving centres and recognized training agencies operating within Egypt, is training for enriched air nitrox, introductory dives and snorkelling services. Revised standards include the requirement that all introductory dives are treated as training dives. All ISO standards are revised every ve years by a committee of diving industry heads, including training agencies such as CMAS and PADI. Changes are made to these standards must be sent to ISO member countries for comment and analysis before they are published. Other ISO standards being looked at include precise de nitions of con ned and open water conditions. This is in response to the growing number of purpose built inland sites for divers.
Egypt is one of the few places where these internationally recognised standards are compulsory by law. Zeyad M ElBassel said: ‘In Egypt these are mandatory, not just recommended. However, even in countries where these standards are not mandatory, they [ISO and EUF standards] are still the reference which legal and insurance investigations measure against when things go wrong. These standards ensure a level of safe diving practice throughout the world.’
Sharm el Sheikh has been chosen by delegates of ISO and the European Underwater Federation to host the next diving industry standards meeting. The meeting will be held in December.
Source www.cdws.travel
DIVERS GIVE THE OIL CLEAR
All CDWS member diving and watersports centers are operating as normal in the resorts of El Gouna and Hurghada following an oil spill in open sea in June. The spill, which was classied as ‘limited’, is thought to have been caused by a leak at an o shore Red Sea oil rig situated 40 miles north of El Gouna.
According to information received by the CDWS, the main concentration of oil and the most polluted area was far north of El Gouna near a bird sanctuary. Around 12 hotels in the Hurghada and El Gouna area reported oil on beaches in the days following the spill, however, according to conservationists based in the area, the clean up of these areas ran successfully.
The Environment Aff airs Agency (EEAA), together with the Center for the Combat of Petroleum Pollution and the Red Sea Protectorates Authority, oversaw the clean-up operation. CDWS cannot con rm the extent of the damage caused, however, CDWS member operations in the area reported little signs of the spill. Dive centres from both El Gouna and Hurghada area, including Aquarius, Ilios Dive Club and Blue Brothers, said their guides had seen no signs of oil on the reefs and that following the clean up, most of the spill on shore had been cleared. Hurghada-based conservation organization HEPCA con rmed that the e orts to contain the impact of the oil spill had been very successful.
‘More than 90 per cent of the beaches north of Hurghada were cleaned and the manual collection method has proven to be very successful,’ said the HEPCA statement. ‘Most of the hotels and resorts have informed us that their beaches are back to normal. More e orts are expected regarding the clean up of the northern islands of Um El Luhaimat and Tawila which are located around 30 miles north of Hurghada.’
Source www.cdws.travel
PLASTIC; IT'S NOT FANTASTIC!
A study has measured the amount of plastic debris found in a region of the Atlantic Ocean over a 22-year period.
US researchers, writing in Science, suggest the volume of plastic appeared to have peacked in recent years. One reason could be tighter marine pollution rules that prevent vessels dumping their waste at sea. The team said monitoring the free-floating plastic also provided an insight into the behaviour of ocean surface currents.
They found plastic, most pieces measuring no more than a few millimetres, in more than 60% of 6,136 samples collected by dragging fine-meshed nets along the ocean's surface. The researchers - from the US-based Sea Education Association (SEA), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Hawaii - described plastic as a "major contaminant".
"Plastic marine pollution is a significant environmental concern, yet a quantitative description of the scope of this problem in the open oceanis lacking," they wrote.
"Their chemically engineered durability and slow rate of biodegradation allow these synthetic polymers to withstand the ocean environment for years to decades or longer."
The impacts caused by the debris include: sea animals becoming entangled seabirds and other marine creatures eating the plastic the debris being used as a "life raft" by some species to reach areas outside their normal distribution range. "While high concentrations of floating plastic debris have been found in the Pacific Ocean, only limited data exist to quantify and explain the geographical range," they said.
"In the Atlantic Ocean, the subject has been all but ignored."
The team analysed data from ship surveys collected over 22 years between 1986 and 2008, which involved in excess of 6,000 net tows that gathered more than 64,000 pieces of plastic.
The largest number of plastic pieces in the data set was collected in 1997, in which 1,069 pieces were recovered by researchers in a single 30-minute tow. This equated to 580,000 pieces per square kilometre.
The team observed that the highest concentrations of floating plastic were "clearly associated" with a convergence of surface currents and prevailing winds.
"This convergence zone ... extends across most of the sub-tropical North Atlantic basin," they reported.
"This correspondence not only explains the plastic distribution, but also illustrates how floating debris acts as a tracer of large-scale mean surface currents."
Using a series of tracers, the team was able to estimate that it took fewer than 60 days for plastic to be carried to the "collection center" from coastal waters on the eastern shores of the US.
As for the source of the plastic, the team said that there was no study that quantified the volume of plastic entering the ocean. However, they suggested that the increase recorded over the study period was likely to have come from land-based sources.
They said the global production of plastic materials had increased five-fold between 1976 and 2008, and the amount thrown away in the US has risen four-fold during the past two decades. Meanwhile, the volume being dumped by vessels had fallen as a result of rules introduced in 1988 that prohibited the dumping of plastic at sea. But the team said that the projected increase from land sources was not reflected in the data gathered by the ship surveys.
"It is unlikely that ocean circulation could account for an export of plastic from the region large enough to offset the presumed increase in input," they suggested.
They offered a number of possible reasons for the discrepancy, including the plastic being broken down into pieces that were too small to be captured by the survey's tow nets, the debris sinking beneath the surface, or the material being ingested by animals.
In order to curb the long-term environmental impact of free-floating plastic in the world's oceans, the team said their study offered evidence that any effort that prevented discarded plastic from land sources entering the water in the first place could be "measurably effective".
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