Today marks the first community Beach & Dive Site clean up for 2010. The Crystal team, once again showed up in great numbers to participate in the first Dive Site Clean Up of the year. The event is held in conjunction with the Save Koh Tao Group, with a number of dive schools joining forces to clean the ocean of the garbage that has accumulated over the monsoon period.

The clean ups are done on a monthly basis from January through to October. The main aim is to remove anything that shouldn't be in the ocean or anything that has a detrimental effect on the underwater environment. The most common rubbish brought up by our divers is usually discarded debris from fishing boats. This can include, clothes, batteries, polystyrene containers, fishing nets, plastic bags, metallic items, pieces of fibre glass, the list continues.

The clean ups also serve an important educational purpose for all divers, to highlight the plight of the worlds oceans and the impact it has on its reefs. Over the past decade there has been a major decline in the health of the world's reefs for a number of reasons; increased tourism, uneducated snorkellers/divers and coastline construction to name a few. With the marine conservation projects undertaken here on Koh Tao, we hope to change some of these impacts for the greater good.