July 1998
No dynamite and No fishing within One Mile Please.

This month saw a letter come in from a reader in the U.K. who I had better keep anonymous. He said;

"I have just returned from diving the Cape Greco area, my 15th time in the last 5 years.
What has happened to the fish? Where have they all gone?  We must do something because there is very little to see these days.
Konnos point.  I saw 300 juvenile fish dead on the bottom covered in fire worms.  Yes, they are still using Dynamite!
Come on, take a leaf from Sharm el Shek and declare the whole area a National Park.  No fishing within one mile of the shore.
I have complained to the CTO but no response yet, don't suppose they will.
They will sit on their arses till Scuba is dead and then ask why.
The dive shops must get together via PADI or BASC and do something before the industry is dead."

We quickly wrote some letters and sent copies to the departments we thought would do something. The Presidents press office, the Ministry for fish and various diving outfits.

We got replies ranging from;

"Dear Friends, Thank you for your message. We are transmitting it to the Fisheries dept for consideration"  and ".  I find it hard to believe that dynamite is still being used as the Fisheries made several prosecutions as I understand , some time ago and that problem , so I am informed, just does not exist any more. Perhaps his mask had misted up and he just didn't see the fish............."

to

"Yes they definitely do use dynamite.  I have also had the same yen.........to get fishing banned from within one mile of shore. But this is Cyprus, all the fishermen will probably dynamite the Diving shops........or go on hunger strike."

Nothing else was heard from any official department and yesterday we heard the news that Five divers in Cape Greco got blown out of the water by some idiot dynamiting?  The police have three suspects but can't prove anything.  Meanwhile one girl has her ear drums gone and all of them ended up in Larnaca recompression chamber.  We are not Crying wolf If you have any clout please use it and help save our sea We have started an online petition that we would be grateful if you would sign "If we do not do something now to defend mother nature and this planet, she will do the job herself"

Please sign our petition below...let's try and do something !   Here is a piece of photographic evidence from Cape Greco
Please click on it to enlarge.

 

This petition is now closed - thank you to all.