RIYADH: Saudi Arabia may be famous for its infinitely flowing sand dunes and jagged mountain ranges, but it is also host to a lesser-known and altogether different environment — one that is cool, silent, kaleidoscopic and teeming with animal and plant life.
This is the underwater world of the Kingdom’s coastal zone, which is rapidly emerging as a global scuba diving destination, with a concurrent surge in the number of Saudi divers.
But for all its wonder and beauty, diving without proper training can be dangerous and even fatal.
All the gear, including bodysuit, oxygen tank, breathing regulator, mask and fins, can set you back over SR4,000, but it is all available for hire at any of the numerous dive centers that have popped up in recent years.
PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, a global organization based in California, provides training and certification, and has been active in the Kingdom for decades.
Raul Ausemestre, a Riyadh-based PADI master instructor with 20 years’ diving experience, explains the certification process.
“The first part is the knowledge review, which is the theory aspect,” he told Arab News. “It’s composed of nine chapters with a test at the end, which is either manual or online.
SPEEDREAD
• The total cost of training and certification is between SR2,000 and SR3,000. • The Kingdom’s scuba diving scene has been transformed by recent social reforms enabling Saudi women to dive without restrictions.
“Then you are qualified to progress to the confined water training in a swimming pool, where you learn a total of 24 skills, including how to assemble your dive gear, familiarization with the breathing regulator, gear removal and so on.
“Once you’ve completed the confined water training, then you go to the actual open water training and testing, either in Jeddah on the west coast or Alkhobar in the Eastern Province. This consists of four dives over two days, again practicing those 24 skills, at less than 60 feet of depth.
“There’s a formula as to how many minutes you can stay at a certain depth, and you have to follow the limit to avoid decompression sickness (also called the bends). If you go too deep and come up too fast, there is a danger of air bubbles forming in your blood or even in your brain, which is potentially deadly. These days the calculations are automated on a dive computer, which you wear on your wrist like a watch.”
The total cost of training and certification is between SR2,000 and SR3,000 ($500-$750).
All the gear, including bodysuit, oxygen tank, breathing regulator, mask and fins, can set you back over SR4,000, but it is all available for hire at any of the numerous dive centers that have popped up in recent years.
The Kingdom’s scuba diving scene has been transformed by recent social reforms enabling Saudi women to dive without restrictions. This has been a boon for Noura, who declines to give her surname.
“I have been fascinated by scuba diving since childhood because several of my family members were qualified divers,” Noura told Arab News. “Plus I’ve always enjoyed swimming and snorkeling, so diving was the natural progression.
“I got my diving certification in 2016, but until a couple of years ago I couldn’t go out on a boat without a male companion — brother or father or husband — so I was restricted to diving from land. That was quite frustrating for me as I wanted to go and see some of the wrecks and coral reefs further off the coast. Now I’m free to do all that.
“My most amazing experience as a diver was in Jeddah. I went diving with a buddy and there was nobody else in the water. It was octopus mating season, and this was the first time I had ever seen any octopus in its natural habitat. There were two of them doing a dance and changing colors. It was a mesmerizing showcase of what they could do with their bodies, and a unique moment we were witnessing.”
Saudi Arabia so far has been spared the mass tourism that has scarred the coastlines of Egypt and most Mediterranean countries, and its coastal waters remain clear, with many pristine marine environments.
Reefs in the vicinity of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, and around the Farasan islands further south, are especially spectacular, with multicolored coral and an abundance of marine species, including sharks that are for the most part benign, scorpion fish, manta rays and even the occasional whale.
Diving in the Kingdom serves a more serious purpose as well. A team of marine archaeologists is now excavating an 18th-century Red Sea shipwreck of Egyptian origin with a hoard of about 2,000 ceramic tableware objects, while Ausemestre has led a group of geologists on a survey of the underwater landscape, and the life it contains, near Saudi Arabia’s border with Jordan.
But this spike in undersea human activity brings with it a risk of damage to the sensitive fabric of marine life, threatening the very qualities that make Saudi Arabia unique as a diving destination.
Medylene Ocampo — who did not even know how to swim when she came to the Kingdom from her native Philippines and went on to become a dive coordinator with Riyadh-based RDA Divenet (a PADI-qualified training organization) — cautions that the expected explosion in tourism in Saudi Arabia could imperil its marine ecosystems.
“Just touching or stepping on a coral growth could potentially destroy it and a lot of novice divers don’t understand that,” Ocampo told Arab News. “There’s a bright future for tourism of all kinds in the Kingdom, but that must come with an advocacy to care for the ocean.”
“It’s great to see the growth in interest in diving,” said Noura, “but I also want to see more protection of the marine environment.”
She described the growth in the number of people interested in the sport as “a beautiful thing” that is also helping in terms of caring for the underwater world.
“Scuba divers are invested in that world,” she said.
In meeting with Staffan de Mistura, Front leaders reiterate "legitimate" aim for self-determination and independence of Western Sahara, a disputed territory claimed in entirety by Morocco.
UN says Staffan de Mistura is "looking forward to deepening consultations with all parties concerned on the prospect of constructively advancing the political process in Western Sahara."
(Reuters Archive)
The UN's Western Sahara envoy Staffan de Mistura has reportedly met with representatives of the Polisario independence movement in Tindouf, Algeria as part of a regional tour.
De Mistura met at a refugee camp with Khatri Addouh, the Polisario's chief negotiator, and Omar Sidi Mohamed, the group's permanent representative to the United Nations, the AFP news agency, citing sources.
The Polisario movement was "committed to a just peace, just as it was committed to defending... the right of the Sahrawi people to obtain their legitimate aim for auto-determination and independence," said Sidi Mohamed after the talks.
The movement was ready to cooperate with the UN and its emissary to reach "a peaceful, just and lasting solution", he added.
The camp is located in Tindouf, where the Polisario Front is based in far southwestern Algeria near the borders with Morocco and Western Sahara.
Announcing the visit on Friday, a UN spokesperson said de Mistura was "looking forward to deepening consultations with all parties concerned on the prospect of constructively advancing the political process in Western Sahara".
The Algerian-backed Polisario Front wants an independent state in Western Sahara, a vast stretch of mineral-rich desert that Morocco sees as a sovereign part of its own territory.
Rabat controls 80 percent of Western Sahara while the rest is run by the Polisario Front.
Talks with Polisario leader
The Italian-Swedish diplomat also met a group of youth and women, according to news agency SPS.
On Sunday, he is scheduled to hold talks with Polisario leader Brahim Ghali, the movement's UN representative told AFP.
De Mistura was appointed in November and undertook his first mission in July, travelling to Rabat to meet Moroccan officials before delaying a planned trip to Western Sahara.
A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara sits on the western edge of the vast eponymous desert, stretching along the Atlantic coast.
When Spain withdrew in 1975, Morocco sent thousands of people across the border and claimed it was an integral part of its territory.
The following year the Polisario Front declared a new state, with support from Algeria and Libya, and demanded a referendum on self-determination. Since then 84 UN member states have recognised it.
But a stalemate ensued, and Morocco built razor-wire-topped concentric sand walls in the desert that still ring 80 percent of the territory that it controls.
Under a 1991 ceasefire, the UN, which considers the Western Sahara "a non-self-governing territory", deployed a peacekeeping mission.
The international community has long backed a referendum to be held to decide the territory's status.
But Morocco rejects any vote in which independence is an option, arguing that only granting autonomy is on the table for the sake of regional security.
In 2020, after an incident near near the border crossing between Western Sahara and Mauritania, the Polisario declared a resumption of its armed revolt against Morocco after a three-decade truce.
Source: AFP
Are Asian batters the best at attacking spin? While popular perception given the pitches in the sub-continent might indicate that they are, the numbers tell a different story, especially in T20 cricket.
Mickey Arthur, who has coached Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well as teams in the PSL and BPL, believes that while the subcontinent does produce great spinners, he's had to work hard with batters - even the likes of Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan - to raise their game against spin.
"That was something that did amaze me," Arthur said on ESPNcricinfo's T20 Time Out during the Asia Cup. "I thought going and coaching in the subcontinent, which is a fantastic place to coach, we'd see batsmen play [spin] particularly well because they grow up with it. I saw incredible spin bowlers. But something we had to really work on was batsmen playing spin better. They could defend against spin but it was in the white-ball cricket, where you have the wrist-spinner or the finger-spinner that suffocated through the middle.
"You know we worked so hard on Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Fakhar Zaman using their sweep shots a lot more. And these were the areas we focused on and worked incredibly hard on. To make them better players particularly through their middle overs."
Since the 2021 T20 World Cup, batters from the top Asian teams - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan - have better strike rates against pace than spin. On the other hand, teams like England (134.15 against spin and 135.26 against pace), Australia (131.04 against spin and 128.48 against pace) and South Africa (142.16 against spin and 143.17 against pace) have similar strike rates against spice and pace.
A top batter like Fakhar, who has scored at 130-plus against pace since the T20 World Cup last year, has a strike rate of only 105.95 versus spin. India's openers Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul have the same issue: Rahul strikes at over 126 against pace but he slows down (86.11) against spin, while Rohit scores at 156.27 against pace and only 115.87 against spin.
During his time as coach in the subcontinent, Arthur observed that Asian batters are traditionally wristy players who don't use high-risk-high-reward shots like the reverse sweep against spin. According to ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball data, Virat Kohli and Babar have attempted the sweep or the reverse-sweep just twice and three times respectively since the 2021 T20 World Cup. Suryakumar Yadav and Dinesh Karthik, on the other hand, have attempted a sweep or reverse sweep 24 times (scoring 56 runs) and 20 times (scoring 36 runs) respectively.
"I found that the modern Asian batsman didn't really sweep," Arthur said. "They didn't reverse-sweep. Australia, England, South Africa used the sweep shot and reverse-sweep shots a lot more than the Asian batters, who relied on their wrists to work the balls into an area. And it was once that we got the sweep shots going that teams then had to change fields - that created holes for the Asian players to use their wrists where they're predominantly comfortable and confident scoring.
"Reverse sweep is something you continuously have to work on. It's not like a cover drive that's natural. This is something that takes subcontinent batters out of their comfort zones. Because they've relied so much on their excellent wrists - so if you look at the Indian batsman, Sri Lankan batsman or Pakistan batsman, they rely on opening the bat face and closing the bat face to push the ball into different areas. They don't get a massive amount of power into those shots though. Those shots are good for singles or twos but not for boundary options. So they had to find options to get boundaries. For getting boundaries, it's easier to attack the ball square of the wicket and that's to sweep and reverse sweep …"
Has having to deal with four or five quicks in opposition teams made Asian batters prioritise playing spin less? Arthur said it could be a reason.
"We work on [playing] short-pitched bowling and pace because we think that takes them out of the comfort zone when they've got to play away from home. Where really if the batsmen's technique is good, they play those balls particularly well. It comes down to actually playing spin, and that's something as coaches we generally forget because we take it for granted that they play spinners well."
A convicted sex offender accused of putting a New York City man in a coma with a vicious sucker punch says he "blacked out" during the attack and claimed he is not a "violent person."
"That sh– don’t make no sense," 55-year-old Van Phu Bui told the New York Post in a jailhouse interview. "He’s alive. He’s not dead. I thank God he survived. I didn’t want to hurt him that bad. I just hit him once."
"I can’t really remember anything," Bui added. "I was so mad. I blacked out."
New York Post reported that Bui expressed the sentiment in the interview that he didn’t belong in jail and said he would help pay for the victim’s medical bills.
NYC SUCKER-PUNCH SUSPECT RE-ARRESTED AFTER DOWNGRADED ATTEMPTED MURDER CHARGE FACES PAROLE VIOLATION HEARING
Bui Van Phu seen on the left in his New York State Sex Offender Registry photo, and on the right, in surveillance video of a sucker-punch knock out attack.
(New York State Sex Offender Registry/NYPD)
Signage for the New York City Police Department.
(New York Police Department)
"That was my first time (hitting someone)," Bui, a homeless Vietnamese refugee, claimed. "I’m not a violent person. I’m not like that. I wouldn’t do it again."
Bui, who spent two decades in prison for sexually abusing a 17-year-old girl, was freed without bail immediately following the attack in the Bronx last month that left 52-year-old Jesus Cortes hospitalized with a fractured skill, broken cheekbone, and brain bleed.
Bui was later rearrested for a parole violation following public outrage.
NYPD released video of an Aug. 12 unprovoked assault that unfolded at approximately 10:45 p.m. in front of 163 E 188 St in the Bronx. The allegedly attacker, Bui Van Phu, 55, was arrested Friday for a parole violation, authorities said.
(NYPD)
Bui allegedly approached Cortes just before 11 p.m. Aug. 12 and assaulted him as he was standing with a group after leaving a restaurant.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
From behind, he allegedly delivers a hard blow to Cortes’ head, lying him out on the concrete. Police said the two had no interaction beforehand and that there’s no indication the alleged attacker and victim knew each other.
Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia may be famous for its infinitely flowing sand dunes and jagged mountain ranges, but it is also host to a lesser-known and altogether different environment — one that is cool, silent, kaleidoscopic and teeming with animal and plant life.
This is the underwater world of the Kingdom’s coastal zone, which is rapidly emerging as a global scuba diving destination, with a concurrent surge in the number of Saudi divers.
But for all its wonder and beauty, diving without proper training can be dangerous and even fatal.
All the gear, including bodysuit, oxygen tank, breathing regulator, mask and fins, can set you back over SR4,000, but it is all available for hire at any of the numerous dive centers that have popped up in recent years.
PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, a global organization based in California, provides training and certification, and has been active in the Kingdom for decades.
Raul Ausemestre, a Riyadh-based PADI master instructor with 20 years’ diving experience, explains the certification process.
“The first part is the knowledge review, which is the theory aspect,” he told Arab News. “It’s composed of nine chapters with a test at the end, which is either manual or online.
SPEEDREAD
• The total cost of training and certification is between SR2,000 and SR3,000. • The Kingdom’s scuba diving scene has been transformed by recent social reforms enabling Saudi women to dive without restrictions.
“Then you are qualified to progress to the confined water training in a swimming pool, where you learn a total of 24 skills, including how to assemble your dive gear, familiarization with the breathing regulator, gear removal and so on.
“Once you’ve completed the confined water training, then you go to the actual open water training and testing, either in Jeddah on the west coast or Alkhobar in the Eastern Province. This consists of four dives over two days, again practicing those 24 skills, at less than 60 feet of depth.
“There’s a formula as to how many minutes you can stay at a certain depth, and you have to follow the limit to avoid decompression sickness (also called the bends). If you go too deep and come up too fast, there is a danger of air bubbles forming in your blood or even in your brain, which is potentially deadly. These days the calculations are automated on a dive computer, which you wear on your wrist like a watch.”
The total cost of training and certification is between SR2,000 and SR3,000 ($500-$750).
All the gear, including bodysuit, oxygen tank, breathing regulator, mask and fins, can set you back over SR4,000, but it is all available for hire at any of the numerous dive centers that have popped up in recent years.
The Kingdom’s scuba diving scene has been transformed by recent social reforms enabling Saudi women to dive without restrictions. This has been a boon for Noura, who declines to give her surname.
“I have been fascinated by scuba diving since childhood because several of my family members were qualified divers,” Noura told Arab News. “Plus I’ve always enjoyed swimming and snorkeling, so diving was the natural progression.
“I got my diving certification in 2016, but until a couple of years ago I couldn’t go out on a boat without a male companion — brother or father or husband — so I was restricted to diving from land. That was quite frustrating for me as I wanted to go and see some of the wrecks and coral reefs further off the coast. Now I’m free to do all that.
“My most amazing experience as a diver was in Jeddah. I went diving with a buddy and there was nobody else in the water. It was octopus mating season, and this was the first time I had ever seen any octopus in its natural habitat. There were two of them doing a dance and changing colors. It was a mesmerizing showcase of what they could do with their bodies, and a unique moment we were witnessing.”
Saudi Arabia so far has been spared the mass tourism that has scarred the coastlines of Egypt and most Mediterranean countries, and its coastal waters remain clear, with many pristine marine environments.
Reefs in the vicinity of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, and around the Farasan islands further south, are especially spectacular, with multicolored coral and an abundance of marine species, including sharks that are for the most part benign, scorpion fish, manta rays and even the occasional whale.
Diving in the Kingdom serves a more serious purpose as well. A team of marine archaeologists is now excavating an 18th-century Red Sea shipwreck of Egyptian origin with a hoard of about 2,000 ceramic tableware objects, while Ausemestre has led a group of geologists on a survey of the underwater landscape, and the life it contains, near Saudi Arabia’s border with Jordan.
But this spike in undersea human activity brings with it a risk of damage to the sensitive fabric of marine life, threatening the very qualities that make Saudi Arabia unique as a diving destination.
Medylene Ocampo — who did not even know how to swim when she came to the Kingdom from her native Philippines and went on to become a dive coordinator with Riyadh-based RDA Divenet (a PADI-qualified training organization) — cautions that the expected explosion in tourism in Saudi Arabia could imperil its marine ecosystems.
“Just touching or stepping on a coral growth could potentially destroy it and a lot of novice divers don’t understand that,” Ocampo told Arab News. “There’s a bright future for tourism of all kinds in the Kingdom, but that must come with an advocacy to care for the ocean.”
“It’s great to see the growth in interest in diving,” said Noura, “but I also want to see more protection of the marine environment.”
She described the growth in the number of people interested in the sport as “a beautiful thing” that is also helping in terms of caring for the underwater world.
“Scuba divers are invested in that world,” she said.
Ex-US president Donald Trump brands his successor Joe Biden an "enemy of the state" during a rally in Pennsylvania and warns FBI raid at his home would produce "a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen."
Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in support of Doug Mastriano for Governor and Mehmet Oz for US Senate at Mohegan Sun Arena in Pennsylvania.
(AFP)
Ex-US president Donald Trump has branded his successor Joe Biden an "enemy of the state" during a rally in Pennsylvania, as he slammed last month's FBI raid of his Florida home.
Trump said on Saturday the raid was a "travesty of justice" and warned it would produce "a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen."
"The danger to democracy comes from the radical left. Not from the right," he told cheering supporters.
Trump held the a rally in support of Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor, and Mehmet Oz, the nominee for US Senate.
In a prime-time speech on Thursday night in Philadelphia, President Biden lashed out with rare virulence against Trump and those who embrace his "Make America Great Again" ideology, labeling them a "threat to democracy."
"Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," he thundered, warning that the former president's most ardent backers –– those behind last year's assault on the US Capitol –– "thrive on chaos."
"They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies," he said.
FBI rid at Trump home
Meanwhile, the legal pressure on Trump has ratcheted up since the FBI's August 8 raid, with details emerging of documents labelled secret improperly stored at his Mar-a-Lago resort home in Florida, his team delaying authorities' access to the material, and then falsely claiming they had turned over all classified papers.
Government officials said in a filing they had evidence of efforts to hide classified documents despite a grand jury demand in May that Trump produce records removed from the White House.
The August 8 raid was triggered by a review of "highly classified" records that Trump finally surrendered to authorities in January this year –– after months of back and forth with the National Archives.
The former president has taken legal action to seek the appointment of an independent party, or "special master," to screen the seized files for materials protected by law from being investigated.
Source: TRTWorld and agencies
Amid suspense over the continuation of the Jharkhand Chief Minister as an MLA, Hemant Soren will seek a vote of trust during the special session of the Assembly on Monday, an official said. As per a letter sent to the MLAs by the Assembly secretariat, the chief minister has expressed his willingness to move a motion of confidence to prove his majority. Opposition BJP has also convened its legislature party's meeting on Sunday to chalk out its strategy in the House, party sources said.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Alamgir Alam said, "A state of confusion is prevailing in Jharkhand. Our delegation met the Governor (on Thursday) and he assured us to clear the air in a day or two. But nothing has happened till now. Therefore, we will raise our points in the Assembly and prove our majority". Following a petition by the BJP seeking Soren's disqualification from the Assembly in an office of profit case, the Election Commission (EC) sent its decision to Governor Ramesh Bais on August 25, sparking a political crisis in the state.
Though the EC’s decision has not yet been made official, there is a buzz that the poll panel has recommended the chief minister’s disqualification as an MLA. The ruling UPA has asserted that disqualification of the CM as an MLA will not affect the government, as the JMM-Congress-RJD coalition enjoys an absolute majority in the 81-member House.
After a meeting with the UPA MLAs on September 1 on the issue, the governor went to Delhi on Friday, triggering further speculation. Raj Bhavan sources, however, said it was a personal visit for a medical check-up and he is likely to return to Jharkhand on Sunday.
In a joint statement on August 28, UPA constituents had accused Bais of encouraging political horse-trading by deliberately delaying announcing the decision. Soren's party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) believes that the BJP may make a serious attempt to poach MLAs from the party and also from the ally Congress in a bid to topple the government in a manner similar to Maharashtra.
To ringfence the legislators in a safe haven, as many as 32 MLAs of the ruling coalition were on August 30 taken to a resort in Raipur, the capital of Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh. Four of them, however, returned to take part in a cabinet meeting held on Thursday, in which it was decided that a special session of the Jharkhand Assembly will be convened on September 5.
The JMM, the largest party, has 30 MLAs, the Congress 18 legislators, and the RJD one. The main opposition BJP has 26 MLAs in the House.
Read all the Latest Politics News and Breaking News here
“Once you’ve completed the confined water training, then you go to the actual open water training and testing, either in Jeddah on the west coast or Alkhobar in the Eastern Province. This consists of four dives over two days, again practicing those 24 skills, at less than 60 feet of depth.
“There’s a formula as to how many minutes you can stay at a certain depth, and you have to follow the limit to avoid decompression sickness (also called the bends). If you go too deep and come up too fast, there is a danger of air bubbles forming in your blood or even in your brain, which is potentially deadly. These days the calculations are automated on a dive computer, which you wear on your wrist like a watch.”
The total cost of training and certification is between SR2,000 and SR3,000 ($500-$750).
All the gear, including bodysuit, oxygen tank, breathing regulator, mask and fins, can set you back over SR4,000, but it is all available for hire at any of the numerous dive centers that have popped up in recent years.
The Kingdom’s scuba diving scene has been transformed by recent social reforms enabling Saudi women to dive without restrictions. This has been a boon for Noura, who declines to give her surname.
“I have been fascinated by scuba diving since childhood because several of my family members were qualified divers,” Noura told Arab News. “Plus I’ve always enjoyed swimming and snorkeling, so diving was the natural progression.
“I got my diving certification in 2016, but until a couple of years ago I couldn’t go out on a boat without a male companion — brother or father or husband — so I was restricted to diving from land. That was quite frustrating for me as I wanted to go and see some of the wrecks and coral reefs further off the coast. Now I’m free to do all that.
“My most amazing experience as a diver was in Jeddah. I went diving with a buddy and there was nobody else in the water. It was octopus mating season, and this was the first time I had ever seen any octopus in its natural habitat. There were two of them doing a dance and changing colors. It was a mesmerizing showcase of what they could do with their bodies, and a unique moment we were witnessing.”
Saudi Arabia so far has been spared the mass tourism that has scarred the coastlines of Egypt and most Mediterranean countries, and its coastal waters remain clear, with many pristine marine environments.
Reefs in the vicinity of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, and around the Farasan islands further south, are especially spectacular, with multicolored coral and an abundance of marine species, including sharks that are for the most part benign, scorpion fish, manta rays and even the occasional whale.
Diving in the Kingdom serves a more serious purpose as well. A team of marine archaeologists is now excavating an 18th-century Red Sea shipwreck of Egyptian origin with a hoard of about 2,000 ceramic tableware objects, while Ausemestre has led a group of geologists on a survey of the underwater landscape, and the life it contains, near Saudi Arabia’s border with Jordan.
But this spike in undersea human activity brings with it a risk of damage to the sensitive fabric of marine life, threatening the very qualities that make Saudi Arabia unique as a diving destination.
Medylene Ocampo — who did not even know how to swim when she came to the Kingdom from her native Philippines and went on to become a dive coordinator with Riyadh-based RDA Divenet (a PADI-qualified training organization) — cautions that the expected explosion in tourism in Saudi Arabia could imperil its marine ecosystems.
“Just touching or stepping on a coral growth could potentially destroy it and a lot of novice divers don’t understand that,” Ocampo told Arab News. “There’s a bright future for tourism of all kinds in the Kingdom, but that must come with an advocacy to care for the ocean.”
“It’s great to see the growth in interest in diving,” said Noura, “but I also want to see more protection of the marine environment.”
She described the growth in the number of people interested in the sport as “a beautiful thing” that is also helping in terms of caring for the underwater world.
“Scuba divers are invested in that world,” she said.
