Liveaboard

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A liveaboard boat in the Red Sea

A diving safari or diving cruise is a trip in which several scuba divers drive from one diving area to the next on a safari boat and eat and stay overnight on the ship; hence the English term liveaboard for "diving safari". On a liveaboard you usually change the dive site every second dive and there are between two and five dives a day. A liveaboard usually lasts a week. There are probably most liveaboards in the Red Sea , but there are also several liveaboard tours on the Great Barrier Reef , in the Caribbean , off Thailand , around the islands of Indonesia , the Philippines and the Maldives . Quite a few diving safaris lead to remote, otherwise difficult to reach diving areas.

Origin of the liveaboard

Hans Hass was one of the first to coined the term safari in connection with diving when he first offered diving trips in the Red Sea in 1955 to finance his research vessel “ Xarifa ”. Another pioneer was in Bourbonnais in the American state of Illinois relocated firm Lake and Sea Travel , on cruises specialized. From 1972 See and Sea Travel offered liveaboards in various parts of the world. The world's first ship specially built as a liveaboard boat was the Ghazala I , which set sail from Sharm el Sheik in 1987 . When planning and building this ship, Rolf Schmidt oriented himself towards the American yachts of the time. Together with the ships of the Somaya class and the Number One , which were operated by Rudi Kneip in the 1980s and from 1991 from Hurghada , the Ghazala I set standards on which the following safari boats were based.

Liveaboard boats

View of the dive deck of a liveaboard liveaboard on the Great Barrier Reef

Liveaboard boats are usually between 10 and 40 meters long, on board of which 8 to 50 people can comfortably live for about a week, regardless of external supplies. The special thing about liveaboard boats is that they have a large diving deck and usually a platform at the stern for the divers to get in and out of. In addition, liveaboard boats are equipped with a powerful compressor and standing bottles for quickly filling the diving bottles with air or nitrox . Pure oxygen is often available as emergency care for accident divers . Some boats have the electronic emergency call and tracking system ENOS ready as an additional security feature for aborted divers . Some ships are built specifically for the purpose of the liveaboard, other liveaboard boats are converted fishing ships , smaller decommissioned warships or motor yachts . There are also liveaboard sailing boats.

The dives often do not take place directly from the liveaboard boat, but from an accompanying dinghy . It is usually a small rigid inflatable boat .

criticism

Time and again, cases are known in which liveaboards end with the death of divers. The providers who are under price pressure often save on the maintenance of the ships; The training of the crews and dive guides is often insufficient. These circumstances and the mostly great distance from civilization can be fatal, especially for inexperienced divers. In the event of accidents due to technical defects or improper dive planning, help on the mainland is often not available and the crew cannot cope with the situation.

If several liveaboard boats visit the same diving spot in a coral reef every day , this can expose the underwater world to constant stress. The ships can have a fish selling organization sound cause, with their anchors the coral damage and the crews dump often - sometimes toxic - waste (such as cleaning agents and lubricants or engine substances ) into the sea. Since a scuba diver is perceived as a threat by most aquatic animals, large groups of divers occurring on a daily basis can lead some species to move to other, undisturbed habitats. With inadequate buoyancy control , inexperienced or careless divers can damage the corals directly by chipping off parts of them, or throwing up the subsurface, which can cause shadowing and death of the coral sticks. If underwater creatures are regularly fed by the crew of a liveaboard, this can lead to diseases of the animals. All these stress factors, increased by liveaboards, have exacerbated the already fragile state in many reefs , which is caused by global warming and the associated acidification of the oceans . In 2011, the Thai environmental authorities banned diving at several popular liveaboard destinations to allow reef recreation.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Virginia Maxwell, Mary Fitzpatrick, Siona Jenkins and Anthony Sattin: Egypt , Plant Publication Pty., Melbourne October 2006, ISBN 978-3-8297-1562-1 , p. 492.
  2. ↑ Great Barrier Reef (English), Professional Association of Diving Instructors, accessed July 1, 2014
  3. ↑ Diving in Thailand , Professional Association of Diving Instructors, accessed July 1, 2014
  4. ↑ Maldives Activities , Lonlyplanet, accessed January 12, 2012
  5. ↑ Michael Jung: Hans Hass Biography. RoBoT-Camera-Museum, accessed on August 21, 2013 .
  6. ^ Carl Roessler, Las Vegas: Memories of See & Sea Travel, Inc. Our History Over Three Decades. Retrieved March 5, 2013 .
  7. ^ Sinai Divers: Sinai Divers Sharm el Sheikh. (No longer available online.) In: Magazin UnterWasserWelt. Ulrike Goldschmidt, April 2011, archived from the original on December 8, 2012 ; Retrieved March 5, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.unterwasserwelt.de
  8. ↑ Sinai-Divers: Red Sea Ghazala I. (No longer available online.) In: Magazine UnterWasserWelt. Ulrike Goldschmidt, April 2011, archived from the original on December 2, 2012 ; Retrieved March 5, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.unterwasserwelt.de
  9. ↑ Jürgen Lueder-Luehr: Chronicle of TC Dolphin Taunusstein e. V. Im Zeitgeschehen 1975 - 2010. (No longer available online.) Tauchclub Delphin Taunusstein e. V., archived from the original on March 17, 2013 ; Retrieved March 5, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tc-delphin-world.de
  10. ↑ Linus Geschke: The Downfall of a Legend (PDF; 891kb). ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diveinside.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. DiveInside, issue 05/2008, pp. 33–35.
  11. ↑ a b c d e f g Drew Richardson: Adventures in Diving Manual - German Version , PADI Europa AG, Hettlingen December 2006, edition 2.07, p. 46.
  12. ↑ Dive Vessel Profile - Ocean Quest. Diving Cairns, accessed May 28, 2013 .
  13. ↑ a b Risk Tauchsafari , SPIEGEL ONLINE GmbH, accessed: January 14, 2012
  14. ↑ a b Anke Riedel: Diving and nature conservation - a contradiction? Plant Wissen, WDR , SWR , BR-alpha , October 4, 2012, accessed March 5, 2013 .