Samui Mala Festival, the GIDOA part

Samui Mala Festival, the GIDOA part

Today it's time for some educational aspects of diving, divers and dive centers.

First of all, from 19 - 27 September, the Mala festival is held on Samui and today was Blue Day, when GIDOA came into action. You can visit GIDOA's Facebook page and find out more about them, the Green Island Dive Operators Association, of which I'm part of and today our platform was at the Kandaburi Hotel where we highlighted water and reef issues including try-dives at the pool and gave some presentations, mainly to children of the Blue Water school on Samui. Previous activities of GIDOA amongst other included a beach clean up at Bang Rak.
Representatives of Bio Rock were also on site and participated in the activities.

The Project AWARE corner at the Kandaburi with plenty of information by and from this organisation. Thanks to Joanne at Project Aware in Australia we had plenty of materials available to help us set up this stand.

A nice flowchart by Green Fins Thailand, available in Thai and English informing us on how long it takes down to break materials down. Ranging from plastic bags to aluminium cans to flip flops.

A captive audience during one of the presentations, this one was about what GIDOA is and what they do and the effects of garbage on the underwater environment.

Geoff, one of our instructors at work with 5 young ladies who are participating in a try dive or Discover Scuba Diving in the pool. The pool was filled with garbage by us, like fish nets with small plastic fish caught up in it, empty plastic bottles, a car tire etc so they can experience how that looks like underwater.

The Bangkok Samui Hospital supported today's event by sending an ambulance plus staff to stand by in case of a medical emergency, good for us that we didn't need them but thanks for coming over.
Thanks to all who helped out today, Marion, Paul, Sarah, Becci and Geoff, Mel and all staff of the various shops that came along.
Camille




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