Yet again, an illegally discarded fishing net was found caught on the delicate corals of a reef in TARP; yet again, a team of experienced Project AWARE divers, removed the destructive marine debris!
Sprawling on the top reef of the site between 7-12 metres, this net was quite possibly the largest net we had ever seen at 200m+!
The organised team efficiently removed the ‘beast’, and more importantly, they did so SAFE-ly! Our own dedicated and full-time staff team of PADI Instructors and Divemasters-in-training, international internship candidates who had only just completed their Instructor Development Course (IDC) to become Instructors themselves contributed an awesome effort to preserve our local marine environment in Kota Kinabalu!
Our dive operations have fully-sponsored, with logistics and manpower, to conduct over a hundred net removals in the past decade. Of course, because it a duty of divers the world over to contribute in whatever way they can, and we will continue to support our local environmental authorities to maintain the balance of the marine ecosystem. If we want to continue exploring the oceans, we need to keep it healthy!
No need to be a diver to get involved – if you follow our www.projectaware.org blog, you will find various organised projects we have conducted to raise awareness in our local community by inviting that local community to experience contributing themselves! It really needs to be a community-based effort if we want to see a positive difference!
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