We had a long weekend of Green Events for Dive for Earth Day. These included Lion Fish and Whale Shark talks, beach and underwater cleanups, coral watch and lionfish containment dives and a BBQ. On the beach clean up alone we collected 309kgs of rubbish, 250kgs (81%) of which was plastic and has gone to the recycling plant.

Whilst we are on the subject of Lion Fish, we have two things to update you on about that. Firstly our very own Josiah (a.k.a. Juicy!) has published his own distinctive specialty unique to Utila and Utila Dive Centre that has been approved by PADI. It is called Caribbean Lion Fish Containment Diver and teaches people the techniques needed to capture Lion Fish in support of our efforts to control the population of these fish. For those of you who do not know, they are not native to this region and so have no natural predators and as they are rampant feeders and reproducers, they can ruin a reef.

In addition, the Utila College of Marine Ecology organized the first Utila Lion Fish Derby. Teams from all the dive centres spent a day capturing and killing Lion Fish and the total for the day was almost 500, which makes a significant impact.