I've been hanging at Blue Season Bali for the past 3 weeks. As part of their ECO Internship program they conduct frequent beach and underwater cleanups. On March 8th we went out to Sanur beach; just where people board the daily boat for trips to Nusa Penida and Padang Bai. They also do most of their training dives here: from PADI Open Water students to their Instructor Development Courses. Besides this, the diving just off the coast of Sanur can be suprisingly beautiful. A few days ago I saw 2 sea snakes, flatheads, juvenile lionfish, a school of barracudas, and juvenile Andaman sweetlips. Unfortunately, the populair dive site Dog's Point is subject to a lot of rubbish, boat traffic, and run-off. Thus we had good reasons to clean this area; both on land as well as underwater.

We took off from the dive center with a bus full of Interns and enthusiasts led by Marine Biologist Niels, staff instructor Robert and Internship Manager Stefan. Using the meshed bags provided by Project AWARE we removed a lot of rubbish from the sand channel and the adjacent reef in Dog's Point. Unfortunately, for this rather small dive site it took as at least half an hour to take out most of the rubbish. Items varying from diapers and shoes, to fishing gear and plastic bags, everything was taken to our own boat, the Bali Ocean II. After lunch, we went back to the beach but this time we didn't need our SCUBA gear. We cleaned a long stretch of beach, right in front of some restaurants and hotels. People sometimes were surprised to see us, divers, clean the beach; a sign that they don't expect people to care about the marine environment. But we do! When we came back to the dive center all the rubbish was sorted out and we made note of the different types of rubbish we found. Even in such a small period of time, we collected:

• 388 plastic bags
• 153 plastic food wrappers
• 2 beverage bottles
• 16 caps & lids
• 30 cigarette boxes
• 4 diapers
• 16 fishing lines
• 57 straws & stirrers
• 4 glass bottles
• 17 cloth fragments
• 10 cardboard fragments
• 8 shoes

Thanks to all participants and Blue Season Bali we managed to do something back for the ocean; the ocean we dive daily in and consider it our office!