Dive Friends Bonaire | Quarterly Clean Up Dive October 17th, 2020

Team up to clean up, that’s our slogan for the Quarterly Clean Up Dive!

We had our fourth and last quarterly cleanup for 2020 on October 17.

Due to the current situation with COVID-19, all things are a little bit different then our previous cleanups but that was not going to ruin the fun (or any day for that matter!)!

We met up with our Dive Friends staff and volunteers at our central location, Yellow Submarine.

The goal was to a clean-up dive on the Bonaire Harbor front, which just a few days before was hit by a big wind reversal which high wind speeds and waves.

This event has done a lot of damage to the local fishermen’s pier, to the boats that are moored in front of the harbor front and generally blew a lot of trash into the ocean.

We were there at the right time and at the right moment to clean up the trash! 

Of course, because we want to make sure everyone his health and safety is guaranteed, so we made a reservation schedule for checking in our 40 volunteers.

The first group started at 9 am then with 20 minutes interval time we continued until all 40 people were checked in.

The divers had a great time, who can blame them!? Going out for a beautiful dive and doing something good for the ocean that gives you mayor karma-points, is always a good idea!

The first group returned after about an hour and we started counting right away. There was a lot more trash then we expected, and bags returned full or overflowing, which is a good thing!

This means the ocean is a lot of a cleaner place now then it was yesterday ;)

We collected 180 kilos of trash, mostly plastic fragments but also 144 glass bottles, a reef anchor and even a few very new looking pieces of clothing.

After sorting out all the trash we put it in separate containers provided by Selibon, we are lucky that our local trash company is also invested in recycling and the environment.

Also, every piece of trash is registered for project aware.

Project aware is worldwide non-profit organization based solely on the conservation of our oceans, marine life, and everything that we divers love and want to preserve.With all the data coming in from clean up dives all over the world, they can not only lead to the sources of pollution but also they have built a detailed map of all marine debris that is cleaned out by divers.

We as Dive Friends Bonaire not only do our part in these clean up dive but did you know we are also a 100% aware Dive shop?This means we have adopted and maintain our house reefs by doing monthly clean up dives, all our dive shops are as eco-friendly as possible and we get to certify you with cool cards with pictures of manta’s, sharks and leafy green sea dragons.

In the end it was a delightful end of a very successful day.

Again, we left the ocean a little cleaner than it was before, and we got to hang out with super enthusiastic divers.

A big shoutout to all our volunteer divers, crew and everyone that has made this clean up dive possible!

For the actual results and more details about this cleanup dive please check out our project aware page, which has every single piece of trash we counted nicely displayed in a virtual graph:

https://www.projectaware.org/diver/dive-friends-bonaire

For more information on our clean up events check our website, Facebook and Instagram page:

https://www.facebook.com/divefriendsbonaire

https://www.instagram.com/divefriendsbonaire

https:/www.divefriendsbonaire.com

If you were on this clean up, thank you for protecting our ocean and we hope to see you on the next clean up dives!