We provide daily dive trips and dive courses around the island of Nusa Penida, Indonesia
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As passionate divers we all love to experience the beauty and wonders of the underwater world, however, as much as we hate to admit, our love for the sport can inadvertently impact the environment. With an estimated one million new certified divers each year, unless we engage in sustainable measures to protect it, there will be no underwater world left for future generations to explore.
Find out what we decided to do about that in this post by becoming a Green Fins Member.
Green Fins was established in 2004 and is the World’s first independent certificate to stop environmental impact from marine-based tourism.
They have a proven conservation management approach, implemented by The Reef-World Foundation and the UN Environment Programme. It aims to protect coral reefs by providing environmentally friendly guidelines which promote sustainable diving and snorkelling.
They estimate that operators following their practice guidelines has caused a 20% average improvement in sustainability around the world.
In order to become a Green Fins Member, the marine tourism operator has to be assessed and meet a minimum threshold score, which proves they have the minimal acceptable environmental standard of environmental operations. Operators that qualify with these standards are then ranked according to their performance as Bronze, Silver or Gold to provide visitors greater transparency where an operator is along their sustainable journey.
Here at Scuba Junkie Penida we took the decision to have an in-person Green Fins impact assessment, and we are delighted to say that we passed are now a Silver Certified Green Fins Member. The Green Fins team followed us out on a dive trip for the day, watching our interactions with guests, listening to our boat and dive briefings, they also followed us on our dives and interviewed our crew.
At the end of the assessment, the Green Fins regional team provided a training session to highlight the important methods that they recommend.
Our dive guides, instructors, captains and crew all attended our presentation on the assessment day.
After our assessment we were provided with lots of great materials and downloadable resources for our dive resort.
This included a Green Fins Member Code of Conduct to follow which covers the best practices for both above and below the water and considers the different roles of all staff as well as for our guests. The practices can apply to all marine environments.
We were given three target areas to work on over the next 12 months:
Our first target as a Green Fins Member was to implement a reef safe sunscreen policy. We already had guidance on our website and in our bookings communications but we have improved this wording to be more specific.
We also display the Green Fins materials on the subject, sell a reef-safe sunscreen brand and offer a sample of this brand on our dive boat for guests who do not have their own.
We are no strangers to beach and underwater clean-ups at Scuba Junkie so this is a relatively easy task for us to fulfil!
We have already conducted three clean-up events between December and February and we plan to do at least one per month going forward.
Cleaning up is important, of course, but it's important to log the findings from the clean-up. Data logged from beach and underwater clean-ups is uploaded onto PADI Aware's app, this involves logging which materials / items we find and how many of them along with the estimated total weight of the marine debris collected.
We have to admit that we were a little confused by this goal, as we don't anchor on any dive sites and never have. With Nusa Penida being a Marine Protected Area (MPA), there is already a no anchoring policy in place for all dive sites which we follow without exception. On many sites in the area there are fixed mooring buoys, so we use these or tether to another boat which is already using it while on our surface intervals. On sites which don't have fixed moorings, such as the manta ray sites, our boats simply drive away from the reef a little to wait for the divers to surface (no anchoring, of course).
Our boat mooring area at the beach already uses fixed lines for the stern of our boats, but permanent moorings which we installed for the bow have eroded over time so we need to investigate this again to find a longer lasting solution.
It goes without saying, that when it comes to our annual re-assessment that we are aiming to be a Gold Certified Green Fins Member!
You can help contribute to marine conservation by choosing to dive or snorkel with a Green Fins Member or PADI Eco Centers (like us!) and always follow the code of conduct whilst diving or snorkelling. You can also provide environmental feedback (positive or negative) to operators to increase the demand for sustainability and if you wanted to expand your personal environmental skills and knowledge you can take a Green Fins Diver e-Course.
As awareness about global environmental issues grows, divers and snorkelers are increasingly seeking out businesses that support and show commitment to sustainability. It is becoming progressively more common for people to book a dive/snorkelling trip with a Green Fins Member over a non-member operator. So, what are you waiting for? Come and join us on a dive trip!
