What a great day it was! After a few days of big swell and surge, the weather was awesome and the ocean calmed down to allow for great diving. It was a very busy day on the beach and under the Coral Divers gazebo where visiting scuba clubs (Scubaversity, Toti Dive Club, and Scuba Steve Dive Club)and our guests and staff joined in the initiative of protecting our beautiful and pristine coral reefs by joining the AWARE Dive Against Debris Survey.

A total of 8 boats did 19 launches taking a total of 182 divers to various dive sites on our awesome reefs for the day of which 13 of the launches took a total of 109 divers that joined in the survey to various dive sites. Dive sites that were surveyed were our famous 7 Mile reef (21 divers), “Snappers College” 6.5 mile (10 divers), “Ribbon” 5 Mile reef (19 divers), and the popular 2 Mile reef ( 59 divers).

All and all it was a very enjoyable day with wonderful dives and awesome sightings. At the end of the day all the surveys and debris collected on the coral reefs were handed in. A total of 3 items were found including a piece of rope found by Hylton (Coral Divers staff) on the 7 Mile reef, a Scuba mask found by Nadine from Scubaversity on the 5 Mile “Ribbon dive and an ear bud found by one of the Toti Scuba Club members.

This would not sound like a very successful day for removing debris from our ocean and coral reefs, but this only shows how lucky we actually are to still be able to dive on such pristine reefs where debris is not something commonly found. This also makes it even more important to try our best to preserve what we have left and to prevent our reefs from becoming a rubbish dump like sadly seen in so many other places in the world.

I would like to thank every diver involved in the Dive Against Debris Survey for their participation and efforts as well as the Coral Divers staff that assisted and especially Daelyn and Tim that gave up diving for the day to assist with organizing and paperwork on the beach.