Scuba Diving Okinawa and the Disappearing Coral Reef

During the ten years I lived in Okinawa I became involved in the sport of scuba diving. It all began with a certification class at Ed's Pro Dive Shop which was located between Camp Kuwue and Camp Butler on Highway 58. The place is long gone now but in the day it was the happening place to learn how to dive. It was there that I met Mo Braren an Air Force Master Sergeant and Naui Master Scuba Instructor. He taught me and others to safely dive the waters around Okinawa. Our basic class took place in one of the many cuts in the reef off the Sunabe Seawall.

At that time there was no America Town there and the south end of the seawall towards Naha was actually a small boat harbor. There was no sunset beach only what use to be called Hamby field, a large fenced in open area that was once a heliport, I believe, for military helicopters. Today it has been filled in with dark red Okinawan soil and rock taken from the mountains near the Motobu area of Okinawa. The soil trucked in by elaborately decorated Japanese dump trucks, to fill in the reef and create additional land for housing, stores, movie plexes, and places like America town with its ferris wheel and bright lights. Yes in those days not so long ago the area was natural.

My instructor Mo took a liking to me and I began taking certification classes to attain a higher level of diving certification. Advanced diver, rescue diver, and dive master were all accomplished in a relatively condensed amount of time. I was confident in my diving ability and was soon helping out as a divemaster with many of Mo's classes. I met many fellow divers this way and began going on boat dives as an invited diver. We dove quite a bit out of Yakina Harbor near White Beach. I also met a neighbor down my street on Kadena, who's brother-in-law had a 42 foot cabin criuser diving boat that he did diving tours of the Keramas for JAL Tours. When there were times that he didn't have tours he would take us and we would dive the Kerama Islands.

The Keramas are basically a small group of islands due west of Naha. I visited them many times during my stay in Okinawa, both with Aki the Boat operator and by taking the ferry across from Tomori port. I remember diving with a friend, Dave Lynch and camping on Tokoshiki island. Spending our days diving and our nights drinking beer and awamori with the owners of the diving shop. I remember thinking that we were diving basically for free with all of the food and drink our gracious Okinawan hosts were providing us with during those stays. Here is a video of diving in the Keramas. That's me in the snapshots.

Once when I was on a boat dive and was paired up with a stars and stripes reporter. He was a US Marine Journalist and we got into quite a situation on the dive off Ieshima island and he ended up writing about me in the Pacific Stars and Stripes. Here is the article.

The sad thing about diving Okinawa is that I have seen how beautiful it was in the ocean and that is gradually dying off. Okinawa is a small beautiful island nation and with more and more people that want to live and play there. With the expansion of the land through landfills and increases in human waste the outlook for Okinawas reefs is bleak. Many corals around the islands are dying off. Including the rare blue coral at Shiraho reef, off the coast of Ishigaki Island, a reef that has been officially declared as one of the World Heritage Sites in Okinawa.  Investigative reports claim that the main cause of the damage is the flow of red soil from near-by construction and agricultural sites. This is not hard to understand as the silt from filling in the reef blocks sunlight from reaching the living coral.

The University of Georgia also conducted a study of coral reefs in the Caribbean which concluded the main reason for the death of live coral is many times untreated sewage from countries surrounding the ocean. Researchers in Okinawa say the same is likely to be true for the dying of coral reefs surrounding Okinawa. Professor James Porter who headed the study, said “We concluded without doubt that the main reason for the coral dying was bacteria in sewage water. We also found that the same bacteria are killing corals off Okinawa and Kagoshima corals” 

Professor of Coral Biology at the University of the Ryukyus Michio Hidaka was impressed with the study. Stating, “We thought that the main reason for the dying of coral reefs was the rising temperature of the ocean water, and that’s why there was nothing we could do about it. He has called for an extensive study of Okinawan reefs in light of the new knowledge. Hidaka concluded, “If further study proves that human waste is definitely the reason for the dying of coral reefs here, then we can do something about it.”

Some cultural aspects of Okinawan society will die forever if people do not start thinking more enviromentally about how their daily lives impact the environment around them. As individuals I would recommend that if you visit Okinawa maybe you should take a small amount of your time and visit a beach or other natural area and clean it up.

I would recommend visiting http://www.okinawaocean.org/index.html . The site
for The Okinawa Ocean Culture & Environment Action Network (Okinawa O.C.E.A.N.) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of Okinawa's marine environment. Their mission is accomplished through education, direct action, public awareness campaigns, and by cooperating with other organizations with similar goals. They will be able to tell you how you can help clean up Okinawa's oceans.