JEDDAH, 13 July 2006 — Commerce, conservation and tourism last night combined to launch an ambitious program to coordinate and train divers and diving organizations in Saudi Arabia.

The initiative is designed to raise awareness about the marine environment, educate and train divers and the general public and develop a strong support infrastructure to the dive tourism industry. Its target is to train 2,500 divers over the next five years and qualify 250 professional Saudi divers to work in the diving and marine tourism industry.

The program, initiated by Blue Reef Divers in Jeddah, is supported by Mobily and operates under the umbrella of the Supreme Commission for Tourism (SCT). The tourism drive by the SCT and the imminent release of a more relaxed tourist visa could have a positive effect on dive tourism in the Kingdom.

“The first thing I want to achieve is the first cell of environmentally aware Saudi divers who feel responsible for protecting the reef,” said Raed Abuzinada, CEO of Blue Reef Divers Group. “I don’t want to wait for a government body to say later ‘Why have you destroyed this?’”

Abuzinada said that one aim of the program, apart from training divers to internationally recognized standards, is to create a strong bond between the Saudi people and their marine resources and environment.

“The locals should be encouraged to be responsible and be involved in the decision-making process,” he said, pointing out that this would lead to a feeling of ownership and a continuous desire to preserve and protect the environment in the Kingdom. “We really wanted to avoid our neighbors’ experience of abusing the corals reefs,” he said in reference to the rapid expansion and late implementation of regulation in the Egyptian diving resorts.

The timing is appropriate; the Kingdom is about to release a more relaxed tourist visa and numbers taking up scuba diving are increasing locally. Up to 3,000 new divers are gaining certifications each year; currently there is little or no environmental training in any of the courses. The new initiative plans to change that.

“We want to look back three-five years down the road and say that at least we created the first step of the responsible diver, especially in terms of the locals,” said Abuzinada.

The statistics on diving in the Kingdom revealed a sorry story.

“Fifty percent of the local divers in the Kingdom only dive for spear fishing,” Abuzinada said. “If they banned it tomorrow, 50 percent would stop diving. It’s only about killing, killing and killing.”

The first significant achievement of the program is to gather together in one body four government departments: The SCT, National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development, the Coast Guard and the Ministry of Agriculture. They now interface with all the dive operators.

“We are putting a lot of pressure on them to stop spear fishing. They have already announced that it is banned, but there is no law enforcement,” said Abuzinada.