ENVIRONMENTAL NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2003

Dear All,

Last months “Underwater Clean-Up and Treasure Hunt” at Racha Yai Island was a great success with nearly 250 participants cleaning up the reefs and beaches of one of Phuket’s main daytrip dive site destinations.

I would like to give all of you who joined the Clean-Up a big “Thank You” and hope you enjoyed the day as much as I did. It was exhilarating to see so many divers and non-divers working together and helping to preserve some of Phuket’s nicest reefs and beaches.

On the openings day of the “Patong Carnival” this coming November 1st another Underwater Clean-Up has been organized by the Patong Municipality in Patong Bay. I would like to invite you all to join this yearly event and send teams of 4 divers with complete scuba gear, tanks and weights.

Long tail boats, lunch, drinking water, garbage bags etc. are all arranged for and participation is free of charge. Divers should arrive 09:30 AM at Patong Beach and will have enough time to do two scuba dives. Several cash prizes are available for the teams that bring in the most trash so don’t miss out on this event!

You can pre-register your participating divers either by contacting Khun Paitul from the Phuket Marine Biological Center at 01-5370047 or send an email to me at hans@doct-phuket.org.

Another few weeks and most of Phuket’s Live-aboards will be roaming the Andaman Sea again. I would like to invite ALL Divemasters and Instructors working on Live-aboards (and on daytrip diving boats as well) to help with collecting valuable data of endangered marine life. As promised months ago, I have send with this Newsletter a separate message with attachments of blank Data Forms for Whale shark, Turtle and Whale / Dolphin sightings that you can print out and make copies of for use on your boat. Please help to record as much data as you can throughout the 2003-2004 season and send (once in a while) your completed forms with your name and Company name to me. I will compile all data in a separate file and present this at the end of the season to the Phuket Marine Biological Center and all participating divers. Recording data may help to create a better understanding of distribution, numbers and feeding/breeding habitats of our marine life and may help protecting the species as well.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE FORMS HERE:

Turtle	Whale & Dolphin	Whaleshark

I know there are many dedicated Divemasters and Instructors out there so please HELP!

For the Shrimp Survey data sheet please click HERE !

Safe diving -
Hans Tibboel,
Environment Sub-Committee DOCT, Phuket Chapter