The Dive Evangelist

This summer, some lucky members of Oceanblue Divers will make the trip of a lifetime: two weeks of diving in Sulawesi, Indonesia. They'll spend a week at a picture-postcard resort in Lembeh, then board a gorgeous and spacious liveaboard boat for another week. And during this time, they will dive until they're waterlogged in some of the most pristine waters on the planet.

How much will they pay for this amazing experience? $4,680 per person, double occupancy. Seems like a lot of money. Okay, it IS a lot of money. But not when you consider what you get. Round trip airfare on Singapore Airlines. A standard villa for a week (double occupancy) at the new Kasawari Lembeh Resort. All meals for the entire two weeks. All diving (three dives a day at the resort, at least four a day on the liveaboard). Airport transfers and taxes. About all these lucky divers will have to pay for is alcohol and any shopping they care to do.

Unfortunately, I can't take two weeks off this summer, but out of curiosity, I Googled the search terms "dive report Sulawesi." Here's a sampling of some of the reports I read:

• "North Sulawesi, and in particular Lembeh Strait, is said to contain the world's greatest diversity of marine bio-diversity on our planet."
• "The keywords here would have to be the immense diversity and pristine condition of the reefs. The coral communities are as rich as I've seen anywhere in the world."
• "How about the diving? Absolutely fabulous, as always! We've been suffering from severe critter overload over the past few months, which is not a bad thing at all."
• "This year marked our third visit to Sulawesi. There’s a very simple reason we’ve been eager to return here: The diving is simply spectacular."
• "The sea life is amazingly diverse. I saw critters that I did not even imagine existed, and sometimes just nodded to John (our dive guide) when he was pointing at something that in fact I could not see!"

Indonesia is Mecca for the dive community: everyone has to make a pilgrimage there at least once in their life. And from what I've read, everyone who does go wants to go back. You probably won't find a better deal than this summer's Oceanblue Divers trip, so if you can get the two weeks off from work, school or other commitments, grab one of the few remaining spots and make 2007 the year of your dive pilgrimage.

If you're a farmer, one of the primary challenges you face (besides the weather) is pest control. Insects, birds, mammals... they can all take a toll on your crops or livestock -- and your bottom line. Weevils or crows can consume your harvest; coyotes can raid your chicken coop. What do you do about it? I'm no agriculture expert, but common sense suggests that extermination is probably the most common solution.

But if you are a fisherman, is the issue analogous? Is the bounty you harvest from the ocean yours to protect? Can you call creatures that feed on your primary haul "pests"? Even if, by some stretch of reason, you can answer "Yes" to those questions, does that really justify mass slaughter of thousands of the most intelligent animals on the planet?

In Japan, apparently the answer to that last question is also "Yes." Every year, fishermen participate in government-sanctioned dolphin "drives," whereby pods of dolphin are driven into shallow bays, where they are trapped and brutally killed. In 2006, the Japanese government issued permits allowing up to 21,000 dolphins to be killed in this manner, saying the marine mammals compete with fishermen for limited supplies of fish. The truth is, meat from these slaughtered dolphins also ends up on store shelves, alongside the meat of humpback whales (despite it being laden with dangerous levels of mercury, cadmium and PCBs).

A debate on an issue like this obviously generates a lot of emotion, and cultural differences can make the definition of right and wrong a subjective matter. But there’s no question that dolphins are among the most intelligent animals on this blue planet, along with the great apes (including homo sapiens). And the video posted below leaves little doubt about the brutality of the dolphin slaughters taking place in Japan.

If you find yourself outraged over this ongoing slaughter after reading this post, viewing the video below and doing your own research, please take action accordingly. If you want do know what you can do, send me an email.

[Warning: The video is as graphic as the subject matter suggests.]

Read an ongoing debate on the Oceanblue Divers message board about a similar annual slaughter of pilot whales that, while ostensibly done for traditional subsistence reasons as opposed to commercial fishing, appears equally brutal.