Scuba Cat Diving, Phuket Thailand recently hosted coordinators from the Green Fins Project link for a brainstorming session on ways to help move the project and its ideals to fruition.
Green Fins Project was started in June 2005 and has met with great enthusiasm throughout the Phuket diving community. The next step forward will be to formally assess the actual degree of dive centre participation and success in enhancing environmental awareness and protection. The goal is to officially recognize companies adhering to Green Fins Project requirements in the hopes that divers visiting Thailand will support these operators and thereby the marine environment.
Green Fins Project has produced some very nice education materials as well as laminated posters for placing on dive boats to inform both staff and guests of the Project's Code of Conduct. Questionnaires will be placed on boats for guests to rate the operators' compliance with the Code and it is hoped that in this way divers will more fully understand their responsibilities towards the environment and boat operators will see the value of "cleaning- up" their operations.
To increase the diving community's environmental awareness Green Fins is developing a "Reef Watch" program allowing all divers, after a simple briefing, to observe, assess, and record the health of the coral and count numbers of selected fish species during their dive. Scuba Cat Diving will be offering the program on both our day trip and liveaboard boats. We will also be doing regular Reef Watches on our artificial reef, Marla's Mystery, to record its development as a new ecosystem. Special attention will be given to monitoring the new coral growth and fish species as they arrive to their new home.
To cap off a really interesting and beneficial session Anne Miller of Project Green Fins presented Scuba Cat Diving with an official certificate of participation reflecting our commitment to the Project.
For further details and how to participate in scheduled environmental activities please contact info@scubacat.comAbout the Author
We are a long established PADI 5 Star Instructor Development Centre located in Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand. Since opening in 1992, we have become one of the most popular and certainly the most complete scuba diving center in Phuket.