On the 4th of March, thanks to the great enthusiasm of the Ocean Paradise Dive Centre Team and the Boat Crew, our marine biologist managed to kick-start a monthly reef cleaning project at Gili Lankanfushi. It is complimentary for our guests as well as hosts, with soft drinks and snacks provided after the dive. Volunteers are also awarded certificates for their participation.
We want to keep the reef around our lagoon free from rubbish; first of all, to prevent animals from injuring themselves on rubbish or getting tangled in various plastics and fishing line. Secondly, this will improve the diving and snorkeling experience on the reefs around our island.
This first event was a great success, and we are grateful to our 4 guests, the 4 diving instructors and the 7 hosts who joined in the activity. We formed four teams of divers who carried out the reef cleaning at different depths down to a maximum of 25 meters.
After 45 minutes we surfaced with around 15 kg of rubbish; our findings included tens of meters of fishing line, various plastics, scrap metal, and a tyre. It was a great start, especially the removal of substantial amounts of fishing line which will definitely benefit our reef.
It is worth noting, that after the activity, while we were sifting through the pictures, we noticed that everyone was smiling a lot. Bottomline: doing nice things to the environment makes people happy – FACT!
