Liquid Dumaguete is a PADI 5 Star IDC Centre and Resort, nestled just south of Dumaguete on the Island of Visayas, Philippines. Liquid is home to a total of seven PADI instructors, found both locally and from abroad. Together these instructors bring in around 70 new dive professionals each year. The cool thing about continuing your education at Liquid is that no Dive Master or Instructor certified at Liquid will leave without a Project Aware Dive Against Debris speciality rating. As a 100% AWARE dive shop, Liquid realises the real need for both divers and the local community to be aware of the human induced problem that is threatening their world class muck diving: Marine Debris.

Liquid has adopted their home reef, Mainit. Every month liquid gathers their staff and DMT’s to clean up this site, sometimes even the resort guests will join in too! I was lucky enough to join a Dive Against Debris with them on my recent trip to the Philippines.

Mainit is a sloping sandy reef with small bommies covered in reef fish everywhere. It's also a drift dive, with quite a strong current! This was a new experience for me and can safely say that I was feeling quite task loaded 15m down, following a long piece of fishing line, cutting around coral, fighting the current to stay close to my buddy and trying to get it all on camera at the same time! Nevertheless, I was in my element and the dive was a success.

Between thirteen divers we removed a whopping 17kg of debris out of the ocean; 7kg of that being fishing line! At first glance, the site looks very clean, which I would expect after almost 5 years of monthly Dive Against Debris at this particular site. However, when I took a closer look small bits of fishing line appeared poking out of the sand below me. Giving it a tug, I realised this was no small piece of line. As I gently pull the line an intricate web of nylon, hooks and sinkers started to emerge. The longest piece I found could have been around 10m! Later, course director Berlinda explained this was short compared to some they had found in the past. As the dive went on, there was the occasional plastic bottle, plate, shoe trapped amongst the coral and often a plastic bag would float by in the current. Although I could have stayed down there for hours, after a good 60mins my air supply was running low and we ended the dive.

Just a week earlier nine divers from liquid had cleaned this site and removed 8kg of rubbish. There seems to be an endless supply of fishing line hidden under the sand at Mainit, and the team at Liquid are determined to keep removing it and keep spreading awareness in their local community.