I dive in the Caribbean often, I would love to take a live-aboard that departs from Miami to dive in the Bahamas. This live-aboard goes to dive sites that no land-based dive shops in the Bahamas go. There are very few live-aboards based in the Bahamas that belong to Bahamians. Blackbeard live-aboard based in the Bahamas, for instance, is American.

If American live-aboards based in Miami are not allowed in the Bahamas. I will take the same live-aboards to go to the Virgen Islands, the Cayman Islands, etc. If I want to stay in a hotel and dive, I will go to Cozumel (Mexico) or Roatan (Honduras) where the prices are better than the Bahamas and dive there. Cozumel is well known among divers for resorts and dive sites, not the Bahamas.

I pay $ 120 to dive in the Bahamas when I go in the live-aboard, one of our small boats that fit 12 passangers may be an easy $ 1400 for the Bahamian Government, without doing much to collect the money. We do not harm your reefs, we want them preserved to return to the same sites. This new law will reduce your government income by a small amount, but it will not increase your land based-dive shops income or your hotels income at all. My 2 cents...