The practice is a pre-brief, a horizontal body, and a default no. Duck-dives and cameras are optional; touching is not a skill to “get good at.”
If the shot requires a kick into the colony, there is no shot.
Steps
- Hear the local brief
Parks change rules. Yesterday’s blog is not the permit.
Ask about turtles, rays and closures by name.
- Check buoyancy or fin path
Scuba: a 10 cm hover. Snorkel: knees up. Freedive: a planned descent line, not a grab.
A reef-safe session can end at the sand patch.
- Keep the camera in
No monopod planted, no selfie stick in a brain coral.
Burst photos from a distance beat one crushed branch.
- Give animals a door
Do not circle a turtle’s air path or a shark’s exit.
If it turns, you moved wrong.
- Stay off the bottom
Even “dead” rubble is often a nursery. Sand only when told.
Gloves are not permission.
- Leave it
Shell, tooth, bottle — photograph and, if it is trash you can lift safely, pack it out. Do not make a collection.
A sand jar is still a souvenir problem in some parks.
Skills
- Hover — The scuba version of manners.
- Fin awareness — Knowing where the blades are.
- Distance estimation — Two metres is farther than a zoom lens implies.
- Saying no to a guide — If a feeder or a chase starts, refuse. Tips are not a rulebook.
- Night-light manners — Red or dim light, no beam in eyes — see night-diving.
Progression
- Sand-bottom snorkel — Practise horizontal without a coral tax.
- Guided park reef — Rules with a ranger in earshot.
- Self-guided house reef — Only after the brief is boringly familiar.
- Photography specialty — A course that teaches distance, not how to harass a frogfish.
Common mistakes
- The kneeling photo — The atlas’s most expensive postcard.
- Chasing for “engagement” — A social-media injury to the animal.
- Sunscreen at the ladder — Then a chemical slick on the same coral.
- Taking the “already broken” piece — It was not a gift.
The method is a hover and a no. There is no advanced touching module.