Happy World Ocean's Day to all!

To celebrate this beautiful day I wanted to organize a day full of environmental activities  at Scuba St Lucia!

We started the day hosting a Project Aware Specialty for divers and snorkelers. New diver Katherine will use this specialty to contribute towards her Master Scuba Diver Rating! It was great including examples of some of the environmental things that Anse Chastanet does to minimize its carbon footprint. These include having a full water treatment facility on site which prevents any raw water being distributed into the ocean. Releasing raw water can cause changes in the coral reef ecosystem and Caribbean resorts that do not treat their water have had a major impact into coral reef decline over the last few decades.

We ended the day with a staff and guest lionfish clean up on nearby Jalousie Reef! As many of you may not know, Lion Fish are native to the pacific and Indian Oceans and are an ALIEN species here in the Caribbean. These fish are highly venomous and have few predators and also breed at an alarming rate. They are so nice to look at but are destroying our ecosystem!!! Why are they bad?... well, researchers have found up to 50 species of fish in their stomachs including parrot fish, which primary role is to graze and free the coral reef of toxic algae deposits. It is estimated that a lionfish can consume 80% of an areas small reef fish in the space of 5 weeks. It is therefore important to remove these animals from the reef. We will never be able to eradicate them completely, but we can make an active fight. Today we went out with 4 staff armed with Hawaiian sling spears and a carrying stick. Fish were humanly speared and then threaded onto a spear where we carried them for the rest of the dive.

The benefit to us??? Lionfish is THE most sustainable fish we could eat. A fish that is not only buttery, white fish goodness, but is also a GOOD fish to eat, ethically. Overfishing, and miss-managed fisheries supplying consumers that are not making a good choice in their fish selection, is the BIGGEST threat to our oceans. The fact we can supply our resort with a sustainable and very tasty fish which is also removing an alien species from our reefs, is a great symbol of our dedication to ocean conservation. St Lucia as an island seem to be in the forefront of offering lionfish in restaurants. Which is great to see, and I haven’t witnessed it in many other places.

Guests seem to enjoy trying the fish, and it is always popular when we offer it on menu. Our haul from this world ocean day was 19 fish from one 35 minute dive. I hope the guests enjoyed witnessing and trying the spoils of the lionfish clean up.
Special thanks to those Scuba St Lucia staff who did all the hard work spearing these fish for our culinary pleasure! Contact me to learn about the Invasive lionfish and complete the PADI Invasive Lionfish Specialty course when you visit me here at Scuba St Lucia. Don’t forget to visit and like our facebook page, www.facebook.com/scubastlucia and my facebook page www.facebook.com/charlotte.faulkner27 !!!