On September 29th in support of Project Aware’s Debris Month of Action Two Fish Divers Bunaken, Lembeh and Nusa Lembongan all organised a Dive Against Debris triple whammy clean up!  Yep, that’s right – We did a coordinated dive against debris in all of our dive centres on the same day hauling in a total of 119 kilos of marine debris!

Our Bunaken resort held a clean-up at the Bunaken Village Jetty and the dive site Muka Kampung.  A total of 14 guests and staff snorkeled and skin dived for fifty minutes to bring in a total of 36 kilos of marine debris.  The most common find was plastic items finding plastic bottles and diapers, as well as fishing line and some discarded building materials.  The most unusual find was a mechanical boat part!  Our DMT Hanna organised this action as part of her Divemaster program.

In Lembeh we headed out to Police Pier (aka Bianca) as there had been several reports from guests of a lot of marine debris on the site, and they were right!  We collected 72 kilos of marine debris in fifty minutes.  The area there is a popular area for repairing local boats and this really set the theme for what we were finding underwater…  We found loads of paint and epoxy resin cans, paint brushes, clothes which had blown off of the boats, cigarette packets and lots of plastic wrappers and water bottles.  We found debris even down at 20m, but there was a huge amount in the delicate Staghorn coral at 5m which is a real shame as this is where the beautiful Mandarin Fish live.  Our most unusual finds were a wall clock and a paint roller!  We had some extra helpers on land who helped us separate and count the debris, big thanks to Brian, Jo, Paul, Marthe and Michelle.

In Nusa Lembongan we re-visited some sites which we knew to have marine debris from previous clean up dives but we are happy to report very minimal rubbish this time!  We collected a total of 11 kilos of marine debris
from under the jetty at Buyuk dive site as well as Di Antara which is in between Lembongan and Ceningan. With three guests and four staff members we found typical items such as clothes and fishing line with our most unusual items being a bag of waste (poop).  Definitely one for the gloves!

Thanks to all of our guests and staff for taking part and helping us to make a difference to the health our oceans.