On the 22nd April the Gili Eco Trust held a huge underwater clean up event in collaboration with Project AWARE for Earth Day! 10 dive shops joined in on Gili Trawangan working together to clean up some of our favorite dive sites to keep them clean and pristine.

Each dive shop started with a briefing about why it is so important to make each and every dive make a difference and to aim to clear up as much of our reefs as possible. We gave mesh bags in buddy teams and protective gloves for every diver to clean the reef in safety. With 88 divers in total, we recovered 235kg of marine debris from 5 dive sites, including plenty of glass bottles, plastic bags, batteries and old ropes and plastic pipes.

It is so important for us to keep cleaning the oceans regularly as the famous currents on Indonesia sweep so much plastic out to sea, we are racing against time to collect it in the channels between the islands before it is swept into deeper ocean.

We hope that our dives help to inspire more people to take action in their area! To carry out more Dive Against Debris’ where ever they are fun diving and to invite everyone to Gili Trawangan for World Ocean’s Day on June 9th where we will hold and even BIGGER DAD event to clean up all of our dive sites!

Photo by Alvaro Herrero