Celebrating Earth Day 2019

23 Apr 2019

Prodivers teams across the Maldives have been celebrating the largest civic-focused day of action in the world – Earth Day! The theme for Earth Day 2019 is protecting threatened and endangered species, a movement dedicated to educating and raising awareness about the accelerating rate of extinction of millions of species and encouraging individual actions to help slow it down.

Amongst the vast groups of species targeted by the 2019 Earth Day campaign are some with special meaning to divers, snorkelers and anyone with a love for the ocean: coral reefs, fish, whales, sharks, crustaceans and sea turtles.

Find out what our teams did to celebrate Earth Day 2019:

Kuredu
At Kuredu every day is Earth Day and the official day was no different, the team took divers and snorkellers out to enjoy the underwater sites of the Lhaviyani Atoll where they saw lots of different species including those which need our help and protection in order to survive – the sharks and turtles but also the coral reef and its inhabitants. Briefings always ensure that preservation of the reef is the highest priority and are an opportunity for educating everyone about responsible interactions with the underwater world. The resort Marine Biologist Kristina from the Olive Ridley Project was, as usual, on hand to talk to guests about the work she does in helping to protect turtles.

Innahura
The dive team at Prodivers Innahura loves their huge hawksbill turtle colony thriving on their out reef. As it was Earth Day it was fitting that they were able to free this reef of a giant ghost net. It is important that we take care of this vulnerable species as statistics mention that only one in a thousand hawksbill turtle juveniles survive in the wild.

Hurawalhi
On earth day our marine biologists took snorkelers out for a special earth day turtle tour where the guests learned in depth about the local turtle population here and how we are working to protect them. We also organized an event in our main bar with a short presentation with Marine Biologists Lynn and Tiff about sustainability and showed the coral seas episode of the new David Attenborough documentary Our Planet and served vegan snacks to promote more sustainable diets. They had guests write down pledges on small cut out fish shapes about how they could be more environmentally friendly they then posted all of them together onto a board in the shape of the Hurawalhi logo to keep in the marine centre for future guests to see and help others to come up with ideas about how they can be better ambassadors for the Earth.

Komandoo
On Monday 22nd April, the Prodivers team and guests of Komandoo snorkelled in the beautiful Kuredu lagoon, home of several green sea turtles. Nearly all species of sea turtles are classified as Endangered. On the way to reach their snorkelling destination, the Komandoo team discussed with the guests their main threats: habitat destruction, entanglement in fishing gear, poaching and illegal trade of eggs, meat and shells, plastic and other debris, turtle shell trade, global warming and coastal development.

Vakarufalhi
At Vakarufalhi 8 certified divers joined the team for a Clean-up Dive at the House Reef. Families with junior divers, friends and couples buddied up to help us make our lagoon and reef a cleaner place. Some junior divers even said it is going to be their new hobby! We would like to say a big thank you for all the participants, it was great to have you all in the water with us!