How to choose an environmentally friendly dive center!
At Roatan Divers we are committed to protecting and bettering Roatan so that travelers will continue to see the beauty of our reef and it’s surroundings. We all want a dive holiday we can feel good about. It’s easy to achieve this when staying and diving at resorts and dive centers whose policies and infrastructure are designed to be as low impact as possible to help the local marine life thrive in their natural habitats.
Here are some of the things we do to try and make a difference!
We have recently taken another step to cut down on our carbon footprint by switching over to an all digital system. We’ve cut down the amount of paper we use by 80%. And we are working on ways to make it a 100%. Our system is designed to let guests check-in already prior to their arrival. Therefor when they arrive they don’t have to spend any extra time filling in all those forms. Which also means once they are signed in they never have to do it again and we can always reflect back on their previous visit to ensure they don’t do the same dives again, UNLESS they request it! We can also track their every dive digitally and have a log of their dives available to email to them if they forgot their logbooks at home. BAZINGA!
The system interface allows our instructors to look at the day’s schedule from home while sipping on their morning coffee. So they are 100% ready to give you the best service you so very well deserve!
2. Roatan Divers is also the only dive center in West End that is 100% AWARE. As a 100% AWARE operation, we pass the benefits on to you!
Roatan Divers and Roatan Divers Sandy Bay make a monthly donation to support Project AWARE’s worldwide conservation efforts. As such, all of our PADI certifications are processed as Project AWARE certification cards, so you get to have an exclusive card background with a shark or manta that identifies you as a supporter of Project AWARE, at no extra cost to you! Of course, if you’d still like to make an additional donation to Project AWARE, we encourage you to do so.
3. We always tell our divers to support the Roatan Marine Park and their efforts by buying a yearly bracelet. This year sports the nice bright Dutch Orange color. Do you already have yours?
Our briefings always include environmentally friendly dive practices. Making sure everyone knows that touching the reef or any creature on it is strictly prohibited in the Roatan Marine Park. As the saying goes: Take only pictures and leave only bubbles.
4. We try and make our divers aware of different types of sunscreen i.e. not all sunscreen is safe to use on the reef. Pick a sunscreen that contains a physical barrier against UV rays, like zinc oxide or titanium oxide, rather than a chemical barrier. To take even better care of your body, find a sunscreen that also contains natural oils, many of which contain their own SPF values. Support your community by buying locally sourced and made products - on Roatan, a very good option is Aegis Sol-Screen, which boasts an SPF of 30. The safest and best way to protect yourself against the harmful rays in the sun is to cover yourself and wear a hat. You definitely do not need to lather yourself in sunscreen right before you go diving.
5. We do not support any excursion that has marine animals in captivity or where wild animals are being fed. When our divers inquire about any of these, we explain to them the harsh truth of what animals in captivity have to endure. And feeding wild life has proven through time to be bad for the animal and often times detrimental for humans, because these animals grow accustomed to being fed and start associating any human as a source of food and can become aggressive when they do not get fed.
6. We encourage our divers to eat responsibly. Just because you want to eat something doesn’t mean you should. Before you visit anywhere, you should research what’s green-listed and what’s red-listed on the menu. Figure out what’s caught sustainably, and more importantly, legally! Green-listed seafood on Roatan include locally caught lionfish, tuna, wahoo and mahi-mahi, while yellow- and red-listed items include lobster, conch, grouper, snapper, and definitely shark and turtle. Worldwide, shrimp is also a red-listed food because of its unsustainable fishing techniques, so as much as we all love coconut shrimp and shrimp scampi, you should try and stick with the sustainable options wherever you are.
7. NO MORE SINGLE USE PLASTICS! We offer to go containers to all our divers that are going to go get takeaway food for lunch or that want to bring their own lunch to the dive center and they can just return them when they are done. We offer free water refills if you have a water bottle. Our drink station also have reusable metal cups and wooden stirring sticks instead of any plastic. We also have stainless steel vacuum insulated Water Bottles for sale to those who do not have their own.
8. We are actively involved in the Coral restoration project which is dedicated to conserving and restoring threatened coral species. The coral nurseries are stocked with coral fragments from multiple genotypes of Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) and Staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis). The coral fragments are “hung,” or attached, to the trees, we stock the trees with either “fragments of opportunity,” loose coral fragments that have broken off Elkhorn or Staghorn colonies, or from end-tip clippings of less than 10% of the coral tissue of a healthy colony.
9. We are proud ambassadors of Roatan Animal Support and Roatan Operation Animal Rescue! We encourage our divers to support these amazing groups that work tirelessly to not only save & protect and control the populations of stray animals on Roatan.
10. We incorporate the Roatan Marine Park Lionfish licence to be part of the Invasive Lionfish Control Program and the Coral Aware course as part of our Eco Divemaster program to make sure the future dive professional from Roatan Divers are ready to help fight the fight to conserve and protect!
“All dive shops are not equal. For some, cheap and cheerful diving is the bottom line; others go that extra mile to ensure their operations have a minimal impact on the reef. If divers want this to be the norm, we’ve got to show demand for sustainable, eco-conscious businesses by choosing operators that raise awareness for ocean conservation through both their actions and words.” Scuba Diver Life Blogger - Samantha Craven
