Dive Against Debris is an important part of PADI’s Project Aware. The purpose of a dive against debris dive is to make divers aware of conservation and diving. This is so that divers can see there is in fact a link between the two.
Temple Adventures is a PADI 5* rated dive centre and we have our own conservation front called Temple Reef Foundation.
While we usually try to conduct at least one dive against debris a week; sometimes it is not possible to follow through.
Major reason being the ocean conditions.
However, these days we are having excellent conditions for scuba diving and we did not want to waste it!
Which is why, this week, Temple Adventures and Temple Reef Foundation conducted two Project Aware Dive Against Debris dives.
And we definitely had a whole lot of debris removed!
PADI Instructor Siddharth, Assistant Instructor Tanvi and TRF intern Nikhil conducted these two dives.
Pondicherry is a fishing town. Fishermen depend on fishing for their sustenance and one of their ways of fishing is by using a trawler net.
While trawl nets are relatively cheap, they are actually quite harmful to the marine life. Often the nets end up getting stuck in the reefs, entangling around the reef. Because of this, a lot of marine life end up getting badly stuck in these nets and perishing.
We at Temple Adventures try to remove all these nets and discard it in a proper manner.
We dived at Temple Reef and Danny’s Eel Garden for these particular dives and managed to find loads of ghost nets underwater.
How do we pick up entangled nets from the reef without harming it?
We do this by carrying the correct tools and making sure we are safe! All divers regardless of whether we are doing a cleanup dive or not must carry cutting devices.
The dive against debris team not only carried the cutting devises but also a backup, just in case.
We also managed to rescue multiple little fish that had gotten stuck in the nets.
We had to be extremely gentle as we did so and make sure we did not hurt them in the process of saving them.
After we are done cutting and collecting the nets and securing them in our Dive Against Debris bags, we then analyse our debris.
We do this by segregating the waste we have found and setting them up in a way where we can dispose them off properly.
The team of three managed to collect a total of 4kgs of nets at these two dive sites.
While we love keeping our seas clean by removing these nets, often we see a lot of dead fish and coral entangled up.
We found a dead segment of a gorgonian fan coral entangled in the nets that we were cutting.
When we set out to segregate the waste, we were sad but not surprised to see a piece of juvenile coral dead.
However, this does not stop us from conducting more dive against debris dives because we know how important it is (now more than ever) to protect our oceans.
Ghost nets are a major issue in Pondicherry that we at Temple Adventures are trying to combat one dive at a time.
Would you like to be a part of a dive against debris dive?
You can now turn your fun dive into a clean up one! All you need is a cutting device and some gloves, which you can get from the Temple Adventure dive store!