| Military bases, especially in the austere / remote environments where some of them are, have a few differences from most civilian areas. - Specialized personnel, who are required to fulfill the base's mission - Substantial logistical costs for additional personnel or materiel - Limited medical facilities, often lacking in higher standards of care, supplies, and with substantial evacuation distances Since Diego Garcia is a major airbase, some of these are lessened, but they still all apply. If someone is injured, they have to be rotated out and someone with the same specialized training rotated in. If something is needed (say, medical supplies), they have to be flown or shipped thousands of miles. Each doctor/nurse/piece of medical equipment thus has a logistics footprint several times what a mainland one would. Which means a bare minimum medical presence. Which means if something really bad happens (major trauma from a shark attack), someone is probably dying. Weighed against that... a ban on surfing for recreational purposes seems fair. At the end of the day, when you're deployed in a remote environment with the military, you're there to serve the mission. Fun comes secondary, or not at all. :( |
> Weighed against that... a ban on surfing for recreational purposes seems fair.
> At the end of the day, when you're deployed in a remote environment with the military, you're there to serve the mission. Fun comes secondary, or not at all. :(
I wouldn't be surprised if the risk of shark attack to surfers there is lower than the risk of death due to basically every other activity on the base. There are maybe a dozen deaths (not just including surfers) due to sharks each year in the whole world. Banning surfing due to the risk of shark attack is totally illogical. Surfers are so much more likely to injure themselves or die in any number of other ways surfing. The risk of shark attacks just doesn't even enter the conversation.
I'd be interested to hear the reasoning on the ban. If it really is due to shark attacks, the military might consider getting someone more rational to make those decisions at the base.