Effect of briefings on rates of damage to corals by scuba divers Original Research Article

Observations were carried out in the Ras Mohammed National Park (Sharm el Sheikh, Sinai, Egypt) both to determine the rates of damage to corals by SCUBA divers and to assess the effectiveness of environmental education in reducing these. A single environmental awareness briefing reduced the rate of diversʹ contact with reef substrates from 1·4 to 0·4 contacts per diver per 7 min observation period. At the same time, the proportion of contacts that were voluntary, and so mainly directed at non-living substrate, increased to 63·8%. As a result, the rates of contact with living corals (as opposed to non-living substrates) decreased from 0·9 to 0·15 instances per diver per 7 min. This rate of contact prior to briefings is estimated to correspond to c. 500 potentionally damaging contacts per day at the most heavily used dive sites, equivalent to c. 15 incidents m−2 year−1.