No Gloves When Diving? A Senseless Rule

I see you're looking askance at my gloves. Yes, I'm slipping them on before I dive this pristine coral reef. And I don't intend to maim the reef.

I have a letter from my doctor saying that my hands are prone to bad reactions and possible infections from stinging marine animals. The resort manager okayed my diving gloves even though the policy here is bare hands only. He asked that I don them after I submerge so that other divers wouldn't notice the gloves - but gloves go on much harder underwater than before the dive.

I think that you should be able to wear gloves as well, so why hide it?

Dive gloves are safety equipment. There are a lot of stinging creatures underwater that eventually nail even the most cautious divers. It's easy to brush accidentally against the feathery fronds of hydroids or to hold onto a hydroid-infested mooring line in current during a safety stop. Jellies' invisible tentacles burn on contact. And in a ripping current, any diver can accidentally make contact with the reef when whizzing by them.

So why are gloves prohibited? It's a movement to keep divers barehanded that has spread to coral reef dive areas around the world. The belief is that exposed and tender hands will be less likely to touch and damage the reef. It's become a sign of virtue to dive barehanded and a sign of willful reef health disregard to wear gloves on a dive.

One dive resort owner in Indonesia's Lembeh Strait told me he disagrees with the no-glove policy practiced by his neighbors. He says that taking away gloves to inhibit reef touching is like taking away seat belts to encourage safe driving: an increased chance of injury for little effect. The people most likely to transgress grab reefs anyway, and there are lots of other ways for divers to damage reefs.

I've seen plenty of divers without gloves grab coral to hold themselves in place. It doesn't take long to realize that some coral, such as Pocillopora, doesn't sting and is a convenient bare handhold regardless of coral health. I've watched kicking fins cause much more coral damage than hands ever do. And I've watched barehanded divers deploy a nudie pointer to push off hard from coral, putting lots more pressure on contact than a finger used for pushing off.

I've also seen the aftereffects of stings on hands: hydroid blisters on even very cautious divers that took weeks to resolve; crisscross burns on all the hands of a dive group that encountered a smack of tiny jellies with long invisible tentacles; gouges from an accidental smack into an unseen coral protrusion. My own experience was a deep slash in the back of my hand when a ripping 4-knot current ran us into a wall outcropping. It developed a bad infection that required a long course of antibiotics to cure. It's the main reason I wear gloves these days.

What I haven't seen is any hard evidence that noglove policies actually improve reef health. It's a practice that seems to have spread just because it seems like a good idea, whether or not any serious studies have shown it to be effective.

Yes, grabbing coral is not good for the coral. But I see a lot more human damage caused by careless fin kicks, poor buoyancy blunders, and boneheaded moves like standing on coral. And in the face of hurricane damage, wasting coral disease, overfishing, pollution, bleaching, and other major factors, hand touching is certainly a miniscule factor in overall coral health.

Here's what I'd like to see:

Let divers wear gloves. Spend time instead on improving diver interactions with coral. Teach good buoyancy and fin awareness to reduce damage from all kinds of bodily contact. Train divers how and where to touch the reef on purpose: what dead coral looks like, how to identify coralline algae as a safe spot, and what coral is particularly fragile - all so a diver knows where it's safe to use a finger to push away from more catastrophic contact with coral or to hold on without damage in a strong current.

Maybe it's time for a certification agency to create a "coral safety" specialty that teaches safe touching and basic coral ID, which includes severe stingers. It should be free for divers to complete and certify. If dive operators can't give up the idea of no gloves, maybe they could learn to waive the prohibition for certificate holders.

So, yup, I've got gloves on. But I work hard not to touch the reef, and I hope you can join me with gloves someday. Of course, the pendulum might swing the other way, and we'll all be diving nude with no fins to really avoid touching. But let's hope not. It's not a future that I want to see - for so many different reasons.

- Mike Boom

Author Mike Boom is an underwater videographer based in Oakland, California, and posts video shorts at https://tinyurl.com/42sk7pp6