On World Oceans Day, last June 8th 2019, Two Fish Divers Lembeh has organized an AWARE Dive Against Debris on its beautiful House Reef.
Marine debris are a major problem for the environment. Every year, tens of thousands of marine animals and sea birds die from ingesting or getting entangled in them. But not only the animals are affected, the trash in our oceans is also a public health issue as well as an economic issue having a direct impact on local and global economy. Human activity is the only source of all marine debris, and it is up to the humans to fix that problem.
Dive against debris is a program from project AWARE, a non-profit organization established by PADI in order to protect the oceans, which gives the methodology to act against the problem of marine litter. It is not only a beach cleaning (here in Two Fish Divers Lembeh, we do it every day!) or a reef cleaning, it is also an action collecting data, like the nature and the quantity of the debris found, the local environment, the recent weather conditions, etc., to have a comprehensive picture of this problem. It also encourages communicating on these actions to convince the public opinion and the world’s leaders of the need to change.
As divers, we are ambassadors of the seas and on last June 8th our guests Alexandre, Ghislaine and Vincent decided to join our diving staff for this action. We were 12 certified divers divided on 3 areas of this dive spot determined by depths (1.5 to 6m, 6 to 12m and 12 to 18m). This underwater cleaning confirmed the beauty of our House Reef; we were able to spot plenty of mandarin fish, juvenile barramundi cods, nudibranchs and mantis shrimps … but we had to focus on our mission!
Unfortunately, we found also some trash. On this day, we collected a total of 30kg of marine debris, mainly plastic bags and plastic packaging. We sorted all the different items collected, counted it, weighted it and reported the data to project AWARE for further studies.
AWARE Dive against debris is also a PADI specialty course accessible to all divers from Open Water educating the methodology of this program. It is possible to follow this specialty course in Two Fish Lembeh, or just to participate to one of our next cleaning.
Special thanks to all our nice guests and our great staff who took part to this action!
Together, let´s contribute to a better world!
Richard Becam
Dive manager, Two Fish Divers Lembeh
