On Saturday 18th September, normal business stopped for a day. Dive boats headed for Racha Yai Island, the most popular dive spot around Phuket, especially for beginners, where staghorn and other corals form a beautiful reef. Over the years the reef has got some damage from storms and more recently from boats like fishing boats, speedboats dropping anchors, and from garbage being dropped on the reef.
After the registration of the participants on Chalong Pier, everyone got his personal Clean Up Package with a T-Shirt (sponsored by Badalveda, SSS Recompression Chamber Network, Vachira Hospital, PADI, Project AWARE and AM Productions), precise clean up instructions, a PADI Aware Certificate and for enjoyment during transfer to Racha , three Scuba Globe magazines. Breakfast was provided on all boats and around 11 am the divers got submerged. After 40 to 60 minutes they brought up a lot of trash which was taken over by the participants of Phuket Marine Biological Center (PMBC) . They weighed, classified and put everything on record for statistical purposes, which will be brought to your attention at a later time. We were quite surprised that except for Racha Noi there was not that much garbage to collect - this is maybe due to regular clean ups and the increased environmental awareness of the local community.
At the same time as the annual Earth Day Clean Up a Reef ball Project was introduced by John Walch und Todd Barber (CEO Reef Ball Project) at Racha Island. This project is under the patronage of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the ceremony was officially opened by HE Suwit Khunkiti, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment . For more information about this very interesting project please have a look at http://reefball.org or http://reefball.com.
The official part of the Clean Up Day took place at The Racha, a new 5* location at Bungalow Bay on Racha Islands. They provided the transport from the beach to the resort, though a lot of people preferred to walk. After a lunch buffet traditionally the 13 students from the DOCT Thai Divemaster Program were honoured by receiving their certificates from HE Suwit Khunkiti, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, PADI Regional Manager Rick Ray, Holger and Andrea from DOCT.
Final point of the day was when HE Suwit Khunkiti inspected the garbage - at the first glimpse it was recognizable that almost all of the garbage can be related to fishery, from fishing nets, ropes, fishing lines with hooks to oil filters and dumped batteries.
These two joint events - DOCT Earth Day Clean Up and Reef ball Project got a great coverage by the press. We spotted: Andaman News, Channel 11, Channel V, various radio channels, Scuba Globe, Phuket Gazette, Tip and Bubble Vision.
Summarising, we want to thank all sponsors, participants and organizers for this successful day. To see some pictures, please have a look at http://www.doct-phuket.org. For a report of the 2003 clean up, please see below.
September 13th was the annual clean up day, where dive centres in Phuket band together and clean up the local dive sites. It's a sad fact that not all people are environmentally aware, happily tossing their garbage into the world's oceans. It's a nice idea on any dive to pick up trash, but a clean up day with many different boats and hundreds of volunteers can make a big difference to local reefs. The clean up was organised by the DOCT (Dive Operators Club of Thailand).
Some six dive boats headed for the islands of Racha Yai and Racha Noi, both dived daily by Phuket dive operators, while non diving volunteers also contributed by cleaning up the beaches. Gilbert and Jamie were on The Junk and were among some 20 divers on this boat to dive the reef at the Northern end of Racha Yai. We had a 50 minute dive and got a fair haul of ropes, fishing line, a pair of shorts, a few tin cans and a 10m long section of steel cable that needed a lifting bag to raise to the surface. The beaches were cleaned up by non diving volunteers and they stuffed several huge garbage bags full of rubbish. A total of 350 kg was collected.
