Current projects
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Bali Fundraiser: Empowering a Community to be Better Stewards of their Reef
Bali is a well-traveled Island in Indonesia. It is one of the few places that has maintained its cultural and ecological integrity despite the amount of tourism influence that has inundated it’s markets and reefs. For a small island, tourism can provide many opportunities for local jobs. However, local communities need to have some control over the impact that tourism has on their resources and traditional way of life. Trees to Seas has put together a program to empower a local community in Bali to care for their reef and raise the awareness within their local tourism industry. We will be traveling June 2015 to train two community leaders to become Dive Masters. During this training they will be exposed to signs and symptoms of the stresses produced by unwary visitors. We will teach these local men simple restoration techniques that they can use on their dive tours based on 40 years of knowledge that coral reef biologist Phil Dustan has accumulated. Menjangan is a sacred island off the Northwestern coast of Bali with luxurious reefs that were traditionally used as fishing grounds. Today the fishing community has agreed that a fish on the reef is more valuable than one in the boat. The fishermen became tour boat captains, carrying snorkelers and divers to and from the reef. This is a big step. The next step came when the Biosphere Foundation (biospherefoundation.org) began working with the community to create Friends of Menjangan and the Mooring Buoy Team. Before tourism, fishermen anchored on the reef. But so many boats were being taken to the island due to increased tourism that the reef was becoming damaged and not recovering. The Mooring Buoy Team has successfully set 31 mooring buoys that are in use today. This team of locals have been teaching the captains how to use them so the reef may recover. Our mission is to get members of the Mooring Buoy Team certified as Dive Masters so they can protect the reef from poor diving and snorkeling practices. As Dive Masters it will be their jobs to take people out to the reef and teach them how to interact with it respectfully and not harm what they have come to see. In this area there are two eco resorts, Mimpi and The Menjangan, that will support these men as they become highly trained members of their community. The resorts can foster the message of conservation, while their guests can see it first hand when they dive with their well trained Dive Masters. It is important to address the pressures that directly threaten Menjangan’s reefs not only to preserve environmental integrity but also the wellbeing of northwest Bali’s regional economy and cultural heritage. As one young captain told us last year, “If we don’t have a healthy reef, I don’t have a job”. To make this a successful expedition we need your support. Every little bit will help. Here are our Stretch Goals. As we receive more support our capacity to empower this community will increase. $ 2,000: Learning materials and professional liability insurance for both candidates to become active Dive Masters $ 3,500: Learning materials, professional liability, PADI membership fee, boat and park fees for Bali Barat National Park. $ 4,000: Learning materials, professional liability, PADI membership fee, boat, park fees, and the Divemaster Candidates will receive reimbursement for their time away from work due to training. 5,000: All of the above plus $1,000 for them to put towards materials to repair areas of recent dynamite fishing (see story at www.diveaware.wordpress.com) 
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Palolo Stewardship Program
The Palolo Stewardship program is aimed to prevent trash becoming Marine Debris from the watershed communities, Palolo Valley. It is our next step from the clean up dives we have been conducting to connect the seas to the trees. The main focus will be our public areas where no one takes responsibility for trash. Our schools, neighborhood streets and parks generate a lot of waste. Whatever does not make it into the trash, ends up on the streets, funneled into the gutters, and washed into the canals. Canals dump directly into the ocean with very little filtration. Any debris that isn't filtered out ends up in the ocean. Trees To Seas proposes a volunteer based effort to clean up streets, gutters and canals to prevent trash from entering the ocean. This effort would eventually be passed to local residents who will gain awareness through outreach and student projects.
Ocean Sciences Meeting 2014
On February 25, we spoke at the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2014 at the Hawaii Convention Center. The Ocean Sciences Meeting is an informational meeting where the largest assembly of international scientists (about 5600 attendees) present their research and give presentations over the course of one week. This was the first time Trees To Seas presented at a conference, and though that was a big deal, the true value was in the connections we made with the scientists. We would like to further those relationships in the near future. We know that there is a great distance between us, but we believe there is an incredible amount of potential in working together.
The day after the presentation we hosted a cleanup dive for the meeting's members. We had 15 volunteers show up at Magic Island. We all geared up and paired off into buddy teams and set out with our mesh bags to see what we could find on the reef. We were in the water for about an hour and found an array of marine debris; a quarry of plastic bottles, little food wrappers, and unidentified pieces of plastic that got stuck under rocks and in corals. Larger items that had some how accumulated on the reef were less abundant but took a lot of effort to remove.
The success was in the volunteers, the debris they had found and the publicity we all got. We have never been on a clean up where the divers worked so hard to bring up such difficult items, 2 car tires, 1 boat battery, and 1 outboard motor. The rest of the debris we categorized, weighed, and calculated it's percentage from the total weight of trash (39 lb).
Hawaii News Now covered the cleanup dive and interviewed some of the scientists from OSM who volunteered for the day!!
The day after the presentation we hosted a cleanup dive for the meeting's members. We had 15 volunteers show up at Magic Island. We all geared up and paired off into buddy teams and set out with our mesh bags to see what we could find on the reef. We were in the water for about an hour and found an array of marine debris; a quarry of plastic bottles, little food wrappers, and unidentified pieces of plastic that got stuck under rocks and in corals. Larger items that had some how accumulated on the reef were less abundant but took a lot of effort to remove.
The success was in the volunteers, the debris they had found and the publicity we all got. We have never been on a clean up where the divers worked so hard to bring up such difficult items, 2 car tires, 1 boat battery, and 1 outboard motor. The rest of the debris we categorized, weighed, and calculated it's percentage from the total weight of trash (39 lb).
Hawaii News Now covered the cleanup dive and interviewed some of the scientists from OSM who volunteered for the day!!
Ala Moana Beach Park: Marine Debris Removal and Reef restoration
This is our last cleanup dive at Magic Island. 5 divers collected the following over just one hour...
Plastic bottles- 114
Aluminum cans-69
Plastic wrappers and debris- 64
Boat debris- 40
Articles of clothing- 25
We also retrieved a garden hose and lots of fishing line.
Plastic bottles- 114
Aluminum cans-69
Plastic wrappers and debris- 64
Boat debris- 40
Articles of clothing- 25
We also retrieved a garden hose and lots of fishing line.
Coral Cleanups- Fishing Tackle