Environmental projects with PADI Course Director Garth Schumann.

Coral Reef Institute's beach beach clean-ups!

                                    Post Loy Kratong Festival Beach Clean Up
                                         Coral Reef Institute - Protecting the Marine Environment

Coral Reef Institute hosted its Annual Beach Clean-up in Patong Beach on November 17. Thirty-two Thai volunteers attended this year’s environmental clean up. Volunteers included the staff of World Vision and the Royal Thai Navy Tourism Safety Team from Patong Beach. Coral Reef Institute congratulated its environmentally friendly volunteers with a Certificate of Appreciation and a ‘Protecting the Marine Environment’ T-shirts. Participants received their recognition certificates and glowed with accomplishment and pride from their involvement in being part of the solution and not part of the problem. Volunteers collected 70 bags of flowers, candles, and plastic ‘fire’ balloons (floating in the water they look like a jellyfish - a deadly meal for turtles). Total weight collected was 1050 kilos (2300 pounds). Coral Reef Institute’s involvement was featured on local television about people coming together to help protect the marine environment.

Degradation Times for Marine Debris

Why Would I Want to Pick Up Someone Else's Trash?... Questions & Answers

Why should we care?

Well, just to name a few reasons... besides the fact that cigarettes on a beach are unsightly, they can actually take 1-5 years to decompose, meaning they'll be around for awhile not only to effect us, but also possibly for marine life to ingest.

Other items such as food wrappers/containers, straws, caps, packaging and other human discards can affect marine life when they are accidentally ingested, or fed by parents (such as sea birds) to their young.  Balloons have been known to be eaten by whales and sea turtles, where they can clog the animal's digestive tracts, making it impossible for them to eat normally.

Fishing line and rope can entangle marine life, and also harm humans (we've often found fishing lures and hooks attached to this line - imagine stepping on this on the beach!).

What can we do?

While debris changes a bit throughout the year, it looks like the biggest problems come from picnickers, smokers and recreational or commercial fishers.  If you're picnicking at a beach or on a boat, make sure you keep control of your trash and don't let it blow around.  It's not fun to have to pick up after others, but try to pick up a few pieces of trash that others have left behind, resulting in a cleaner area for all of us. Maybe someone will see you and get the hint!  

If you know smokers, try to educate them on the amount of cigarette butts that are around and how long it takes butts to biodegrade.  If every smoker threw one less butt on the ground every day, our beaches and sidewalks would be a lot cleaner!

If you fish or boat, be careful with your lines and make sure that if you cut a line, you bring it in with you.  Monofilament line can take 600 years to disintegrate!

How Can I Help?

Beach cleanups are a great way to get involved in protecting the marine environment, and a great way to get exercise!  On our beach cleanups, we spend 1-2 hours collecting trash off a local beach so it doesn't go back into the ocean to harm marine life. Our cleanups include a short presentation on the National Marine Debris Monitoring program, and some other ways you can help protect the marine environment.  It's a great way for kids to learn, too!  

- We do cleanups every month.  Even if you can't come on one of our scheduled cleanups, we urge you to take a bag with you whenever you go to a beach, and pick up whatever trash you find. 

- We're interested in expanding the amount of beaches we clean regularly - if there's a beach near you that needs help, please let us know.   

Cleaning beaches can help people, animals and our tourism industry!

Long term monitoring of coral reef along the Thailand – Andaman Sea coast

 Team Nautilus members take a break from the daunting task of during coral reef monitoring to pose for a picture. We rely on volunteers and skilled divers to help us in the task of monitoring coral reefs along the Thai- Andaman coastline. This is a long term effort and requires commitment and dedication as well as precision documenting. Our divers and volunteers are trained by us and we follow guidelines set out by Coral Reef Institute in which data is captured, recorded and filed for future management projects. Many of our divers complete certificate programs in Underwater Research or Marine Photography, Environmental & Research Project certifications as well as Natural Sciences Practicum.

All our environmentally friendly team members attended three days of training at Phuket Marine Biological Center for a long term coral reef monitoring program along the Thailand – Andaman Sea coastline. The current project is scheduled to continue through the end of 2007. Coral Reef Institute has planned a long term commitment to our reef monitoring locations. 

Training workshop for long term monitoring program – over 50 participants attended including volunteer members of Coral Reef Institute