The 'melting pot' of THREE different dive centres' PADI professionals (both experienced and in-training) were joined by recreational-level certified dive volunteers to clean one of our favourite fragile reefs of Tulamben: Coral Gardens fish nursery!

The word 'nursery' already implicates what a fragile ecosystem the dive site is, and why the environmentally supportive Aqua Dive Paradise dive centre decided to adopt the dive site and commit to holding a Project AWARE 'Dive Against Debris' event every month to preserve the area. And this recent July 15th was their very first experience, and they didn't anticipate such a 'crowd' to offer their contribution to the cause, so it was a really wonderful feeling of community goodwill!

The Dive went really well and was a lot of fun too! We had a lot of fun actually after the dive using our new Marine Debris guide and sorting all of the rubbish out into the 100 possible categories and counting all of the pieces. Conditions were not the best and we considered postponing the event, but a last minute decision by team leaders was that it was safe enough to dive in. Even though the waves were a bit big, our dive professionals were great about helping make sure everyone safely entered and exited the water at the shore.  Visibility in the shallows was really bad. One of our instructors found some fishing line while doing the safety stop and had to remove it by just by feeling around. We also learned the importance of having a person waiting at the exit point to note the buddy teams as they exit the water. The first team finished 10 minutes before most of the teams surfaced and they missed the part of the briefing about staying at the beach until everyone returned. They headed back to the dive centre to wait for the rest of us while we were sitting at the beach watching for their bubbles. Finally we sent someone back to the dive centre and were relieved to find them there having a snack. hahaha. Lesson learned, next time we will be sure to have a non diver waiting at the exit.

Probably the best part of the dive was finding a large Hawksbill Turtle next to the reclining buddha at around 12 meters deep. He was eating some soft corals and didn't seem disturbed at all as our eco warrior divers removed some plastic food  wrappers and nylon rope from the coral just about 2 meters away from him. we stopped to take a photo or two of him and then continued along the reef. It was a good feeling knowing that we are making things better for the reef creatures both big and small!