As an inland dive centre, Planet Scuba India can only support Project AWARE's Dive Against Debris effort when we are on one of our Dive Trips and so we duly arranged an event on our Maldives Liveaboard trip last week.

On the appointed afternoon, our 15 experienced and enthusiastic divers and staff duly took the plunge at Maya Tila, the Maldives’ first national Marine park. One hour later we all climbed back on to the boat and made a pile of the trash we had managed to find. Unfortunately as you will see from the attached photograph it was a very small pile indeed. The total weight was 2.4 kg and 2kg of that was the diving weight someone found!

We are all used to seeing pictures of groups of triumphant divers in front of huge mounds of garbage that they have collected and so we are feeling rather inadequate and embarrassed. All I can tell you is that it was nothing to do with our lack of commitment or endeavour to the Project AWARE cause but simply due to the pristine nature of the dive sites in the area!