The day before they begin their IDC with The Dive Academy, the candidates joined Course Director Camille and me for an underwater clean-up from Chaweng Beach.

As expected there were many plastic drinks bottles, plastic floats from boats, sunglasses, diving masks, shoes and many other things, mainly made of plastic. All together we pulled out 6 bags of rubbish, as well as some bigger items that wouldn't fit in the bags. There is so much rubbish there that we could probably spend all day bringing bags out and still not clear it all.

As well as clearing the rubbish we still managed to see some fantastic marine life, including 2 amazing colourful nudibranch's that I haven't seen before, jelly fish and lots of starfish. The biggest surprise of the day was when a small brown Octopus jumped out of one of the rubbish bags onto the floor, obviously hiding in one of the bottles or other rubbish we removed!! We quickly put it in a plastic cup and returned it safe back into the sea.