Team up to clean up, that’s our slogan for the Quarterly Clean Up Dive!
We had our third quarterly clean up for 2020 on August 1st. Due to the current situation with COVID-19, all things are a little bit different then our previous cleanups but that was not going to ruin the fun (or any day for that matter!)! We met up with our Dive Friends staff and volunteers at our newest partner location, Resort Bonaire. Location manager Eddy, together with other staff members, made sure we were well prepared for our divers.
We welcomed groups of maximum 9 divers total every 20 minutes to avoid crowds. Our buddy teams were no bigger than 3. Divers signed up in advance and chose a time to pick up tanks and listen to the briefing before entering our site for today, Bachelors Beach. It is a very popular site among locals to hang out at. There is a food truck on the beach with delicious burgers and (mucho mucho garlic) fries so we expected to collect a lot of trash.
Photographers
Pieter and Aimee were our photographers and took pictures and videos of the day. The first group started at 10 am, the last group at 12 pm. The divers had a great time, who can blame them!? Going out for a beautiful dive and doing something good for the ocean that gives you mayor karma-points, is always a good idea!
The first group returned after about an hour and we started counting right away. There was less trash then we expected, and bags returned half full or even less, which is a good thing!
We collected 30 kilos of trash and sorted it in separate containers provided by Selibon. It was mostly plastic but also some big and heavier pieces of metal. The local trash company is invested in recycling and the environment. They help us out at all our cleanups by providing containers and picking them up afterwards.
We are also lucky with our partners because one of the bonuses at Resort Bonaire is their restaurant, Paradise Pizza! They offered all the staff and participants a nice lunch deal and nobody could resist a delicious pizza and soda after their hard work.
It was a delightful end of a very successful day. Bachelor’s beach is cleaner than we thought, made it even cleaner, and we got to hang out with super enthusiastic divers. We even had a few divers participating for the first time, which is always nice!
Until then, we will focus on cleaning our house reefs at least once a month for our adopt a dive site project.
Thank you for joining this clean up dive!
A big shoutout to all our volunteer divers, crew and everyone that has made this clean up dive possible!
If you were on this Quarterly Clean Up Dive, thank you for protecting our ocean. We hope to see you a next time!
For all the results of this dive, please visit the Project AWARE page.
Hope to see you at our next quarterly cleanup dive on October 17th!