Gloves have always been a very big topic in the touristic dive industry – and they are still today. And after having been quite liberal for a while, we decided to re-think or gloves-policy:
In most dive destinations in the world it is an accepted fact that Gloves are a No Go – even in places, where people mostly stay far off the bottom as most of the marine life is pelagic or free swimming. So in a place like Lembeh Strait, where divers have to come much closer to see the tiny creatures it actually makes much more sense to not use gloves.
Even though there is a big portion of glove users, that just like to avoid the stings of things floating in the water or to be protected against very occasional, unintended touching of hydroids with the back of the hand while photographing, we still see that people using gloves act less carefully after a while. And therefor touch more at the end of the day. Plus of course the small portion of people, that actually do touch marine life intentionally … yes, they DO exist.
For these reasons we ban the use of full gloves at NAD Lembeh: Effective from the 1st of May 2014 we will only tolerate the use Gloves with cut off finger sleeves. Alternatively you can carefully use a stick – and of course neutral buoyancy. We think the use of sleeveless gloves will still offer sensitive people ample protection against stinging plankton but at the same time create more awareness against unnecessary touching of marine life.
Thank you for your understanding!
