A fragile and extraordinarily beautiful world. A delicate, endlessly intricate and complex planet. A unique wonder of creation, our Mother Earth. We humans must look after the earth and the vast oceans as without them there would be no life, we are the guardians and the protectors it is our responsibility!!

The All 4 Diving Indonesia and Mermaid Liveaboards Earth Day Beach and Underwater clean up event held on Sunday at Semawang Beach Sanur was an enormous success with around 30 school children from local schools and teams from All 4 Diving Indonesia and Mermaid Liveaboards, friends and family in attendance.

The event started at 1pm with the shoal of excited children arriving for an afternoon of fun and games with a serious environmental message. All 4 Diving Indonesia had arragned for 6 large bins to be made out of recycled 55 gallon oil drums complete with legs and handles and painted red and green for the different kinds of trash, with red for plastic, glass, metal and green for paper and organic rubbish. The children were put to work painting them with pictures, they were asked to focus their thoughts on the environment themes of protecting the wildlife, the oceans and the planet and how we can do more to help minimize our impact on nature.

Following the garbage bin painting fun there was a presentation from Eco Bali Recycling who spearheads the recycling scheme in Bali. This informative talk explained the basics of recycling to the children (and the many spectators that had gathered to enjoy the spectacle!!) and what an important role recycling serves for the community and the environment as a whole.

The children were then issued with red and green bags for the different kinds of trash and put into teams with All 4 Diving Indonesia and Mermaid Liveaboards staff members coordinating and off they scuttled down the beach in different directions like little crabs to put the new ideas into practice!! At the same time the Little Mermaid (All 4 Diving Indonesia's dive boat) loaded up with a dedicated team to head out into Sanur channel dive site to do the same thing underwater!!

After all the trash was collected and placed in the Eco Bali Recycling truck it was time for refreshments and a lucky dip. There were prizes of fins, mask & snorkel sets, as well as cuddly marine creatures, stickers, pens and notebooks all with a marine conservation theme.

Lastly the shoal of children jumped into glass bottom boats to see for themselves first hand the wonders of the coral reef. For a lot of these children it was the very first time in their lives to get a clear glimpse of the underwater world and something that they would not normally get the chance to do. It was very, very satisfying to see the pure excitement in those young faces as the various colorful tropical fish swam past and so the next generation of local Marine Conservationists, Divemaster and Instructors was born!!

The event closed with the signing of the Earth Day banner, certificates of participation and prizes handed out to the winning bins all of which positioned at strategic points around Sanur bay. With the bright colors hopefully encouraging others to use the bins rather than throwing rubbish onto the beach or into the sea!!

So all up an absolutely fabulous day was had by all with a HUGE THANK YOU!! to everyone who helped All 4 Diving Indonesia and Mermaid Liveaboards to run the event in particular Divemasters Indonesia and Dive Sport the major dive equipment distributors in Bali who kindly donated many of the really excellent prizes.

All the children for sure walked away with a newfound respect for nature, information and understanding of these massively important issues and at the same time the kids learnt a message that they can pas on to their friends and families here in Bali spreading the word, after all it is the next green generation that really count.