John Keells commemorates World Oceans Day

The International Diving Centre (IDC) and Cinnamon Nature Trails, both based at Chaaya Blu Hotel, recently removed 250kg of abandoned fishing nets and plastics from the Swarmy Rock reef as part of Project Aware’s ‘Dive Against Debris’ campaign. Both entities have joined forces to take action against marine debris in order to raise critical national awareness of this issue.

Statistics included in Project Aware’s infographic ‘The Ugly Journey of Trash’ provides a startling overview of the amount of marine debris currently plaguing our oceans globally. It states that “over six million tons of marine litter may be entering our ocean each year” and “as much as 70 percent of it ends up on the sea bed.”

The scuba community is united in their efforts to conserve the ocean through PADI’s Project Aware movement, an initiative described as ‘the largest global movement of divers acting in their own communities to protect oceans and implement lasting change’. The instructors at the International Dive Centre – Sri Lanka together with Marine Naturalists for Cinnamon Nature Trails combined their resources to dive into action. With a few other volunteers, they spent half a day diving and cutting away at the heavy nets, disentangling trapped fish and collecting the trash that littered the reef. They also contributed data via a survey, which Project Aware uses to implement change in waste management policies on both a local and global scale.

“With Sri Lanka being an island nation and many livelihoods depending on the ocean for tourism, we must all work together to ensure that our seas are looked after and remain healthy and productive so that they continue to provide for many generations to come,” states John Keells Hotels Head of Ecotourism and Special Projects Chitral Jayatilake.

Cinnamon Nature Trails and The International Dive Centre will be conducting their second monthly dive on June 12, 2013, as a follow up to World Ocean Day.