A Question of Balance :: 5:00am 15th Mar 2018

Original air date - A Question of Balance :: 7:30pm 13th Mar 2018

_{Water Craft} _{Martin Puchert, from the Underwater Research Group (URG), explains how diving with a purpose opens your eyes to what is really happening underwater. Diving with a purpose is diving where you have some sort of goal to achieve – some sort of measurement or observation or a research program adds a new dimension to diving. Martin has been diving for citizen science programs for the last three years -. He joined a program, Reef Life Survey, which surveyed the life on coral and rocky reefs. It required divers to identify fish and invertebrate species at a site, including sizes and estimates of numbers. Such citizen science programs mean participants meet with other divers and scientists who can share knowledge. He is surprised that when you look for information about any marine creature there is usually very little apart from an anatomical description. It is very hard to get hold of information on behaviours, life cycles and how and where they breed. Survey observations are often bizarre. Blue gropers all start out as females and there are one or two males for a harem of females. If a male dies then one of the females becomes the new male! Crimson banded wrasse all stay female until roughly five years of age when they all become male, showing how little we know about many marine creatures.} _{There are pressures on marine life that we don’t think about. People with aquariums know how sensitive fish are to slight changes in PH, nitrogen or temperature and many marine species lose habitat from warmer water, pollution and fishing practices such as trawling. Diving with a purpose can reveal what is really happening in our waters, as Martin Puchert has discovered. Diving with a purpose is a real water cr}