On Saturday, 20 September, more than one hundred divers on board the dive boats of Dive Asia, Sea Fun Divers, Scandinavian Scuba Doo and South Siam Divers, together with divers and staff of the Phuket Marine Biological Center joined forces with 500,000 volunteers in more than 100 countries in the world’s largest shoreline and underwater clean-up event.
Dive Asia’s boat carried twenty-six divers and eight instructors and dive masters to Kai Nok Island east of Phuket. They removed a large part of a huge fishing net which had drifted into the fragile coral reef. Sea Fun Divers, Scuba Doo, and South Siam Divers went to Raja Yai Island south of Phuket.
Unfortunately, the boat from Scuba Doo had a technical problem on the way out and had to abort the mission.
The remaining divers on board the other three boats where able to remove 300kg of fishing net and other debris found on the seabed. The largest amount was removed by Dive Asia and South Siam Divers. Both groups removed great portions of drift-away fishing nets.
Three hundred kilograms collected by seventy divers might not sound like much but removing the fishing nets especially was a lot of hard work. It took one diver one hour to carefully remove just a square meter of net out on the reef. The divers had to work and move very slowly to avoid damaging the fragile coral reefs.
Dive Asia, Sea Fun Divers, Scuba Doo and South Siam Divers thank all the volunteers for their commitment to marine conservation. Local clean-ups are a fantastic example of how people can work together to take action and make a positive contribution to the local community. Thanks to the commitment of passionate local divers and volunteers we have made a real impact cleaning up the local area. It is amazing what can be achieved and we’d like to thank everyone for their efforts. Juergen was interviewed from a local TV channel and you can watch the Video here on Youtube.
