Marine eco education should be a part of any professional dive training. Before coming to Sairee Cottage Diving, during my PADI Divemaster and IDC Course, I was blown away by the lack of ProjectAWARE promotion in other dive centers. This was not because PADI didn’t promote it, but more due to the amount of working Divemasters and Instructors that didn’t care about putting effort into eco education. This resulted in students not caring about the marine environment.
A few PADI Instructors inspired me during all my dive training from PADI Open Water Diver to PADI Dive Instructor. These PADI Dive professionals on Koh Tao went above and beyond. They taught me how to dive safely. They had a passion for eco education and marine conservation. They inspired others to care for our oceans.
This is why we have created a unique ProjectAWARE eco lecture to teach the Sairee Cottage Diving Divemasters and IDC Candidates about ProjectAWARE, Shark Conservation and Marine Debris. We teach them how to inspire fun divers and students How can they be a part in protecting our oceans.
Marine Eco Education at Sairee Cottage Diving
This ProjectAWARE eco lecture was such a huge success that we realised a follow up was needed. We needed to explain how to organize ProjectAWARE eco projects in an easy way. How to use social networking, the ProjectAWARE website, and the CoralWatch website in an effective way. This is why we created a “How to organize an Eco Day” during the MSDT course at Sairee Cottage Diving. This environmental day is not only for our Master Scuba Diver Trainer candidates, but open to all staff and DMTs.
The first part of the Day starts with a lecture in the classroom. In the afternoon, we schedule different practical ProjectAWARE eco projects. The lecture covers how to use the power of social media to promote your eco projects. There are many different social network pages we can use. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and My Ocean from ProjectAWARE for example. Sharing and supporting marine conservation related material allows anyone to help with marine conservation and education.
We also teach our Divemasters and Dive Instructors on Koh Tao about how to use the ProjectAWARE website effectively. Especially with the rise of smartphones and tablets it is much easier now to show students these tools without wasting time.
We finished the lecture by teaching them about coral bleaching and how to use CoralWatch. CoralWatch is a simple, non-invasive method to assess and monitor coral reef health with respect to coral bleaching. The CoralWatch method uses a Coral Health Chart with a series of colors that volunteers match with actual coral color to determine different stages of coral bleaching and recovery. Coral bleaching is the whitening of coral due to a loss of symbiotic algae living within the coral tissue. In healthy coral, algae supplies energy and provide color. During bleaching events, coral expels the algae from their tissue which changes the color of the coral. As coral expels more algae the coral becomes lighter in color. Monitoring is most effective over months and even years. With divers and snorkelers regularly visiting sites, scientists at the University of Queensland, Australia, will be able to answer questions such as how long it takes for reefs to recover from bleaching and if the health of the reef declines over a certain number of bleaching events?
During the second part of the day we like to concentrate on organizing the practical eco projects. One team performs a CoralWatch analysis. One team does beach clean ups around the Island. This shows our Divemaster and Instructor candidates that it is important to perform these projects besides organising them.
This is only a start. The more eco friendly projects we create the more ideas can form. Please comment on this post if you have eco ideas to share. We would love to add them to our eco programs at Sairee Cottage Diving on Koh Tao in Thailand.
