After three months of trying to get to Sairee to conduct a clean up of one of Koh Tao’s busiest beaches we finally made it there thanks to a lull in the weather. With the wind blowing from the west these last few months and Sairee being exposed and shallow we were constantly pushed to the east side of the island.

A crew of 15 divers joined Crystal Dive & Eco Koh Tao in Project Aware’s dedicated Dive for Debris month.

Divers were provided clean up bags care of the Project Aware. Some participants also used their dive once again to collect invaluable data on coral bleaching using the University of Queensland and Project Aware’s Coralwatch Coral Health Chart monitoring. This data is collected during the dive and uploaded to Coralwatch’s online database.

When we do our clean ups the aim is to try and educate people into the plight of the marine ecosystems from garbage and discarded waste and what role we can have in reducing its frequency. People are instructed to only bring up things that are damaging the environment and things that will continue to damage. We try to remind people that it is better to try to REDUCE consumption of things like plastic bags & bottles rather than rely on them being recycled.

Glass bottles provide habitat and substrate and if removed simply add to our already overfilled landfill. Fishing nets, once secure and fixed to the bottom are usually a good substrate for other organisms to grow on.

It was encouraging to see our educational campaign continuing to pay off with none of our ‘non-target’ garbage being brought up. And generally speaking not a lot of trash was brought up at all which is always encouraging. Thank you to everyone who helped out with the effort today.

Our Marine Conservation Partners include

Marine Conservation Koh Tao www.marineconservationkohtao.com

Save Koh Tao www.savekohtao.com

Crystal Dive www.crystaldive.com

Eco Koh Tao www.ecokohtao.com

Project Aware www.projectaware.org