Just a few minutes of your time can help improve education and awareness of coral reef conservation!

The Reef-World Foundation – the international coordinator of the UN Environment Programme’s Green Fins initiative – is asking divers around the world to spare a few minutes of their time to help improve education and awareness around protecting coral reefs. All they need to do is fill out this short survey about their media habits and views on learning more about the environment and sustainable diving practices.

Reef-World is working to make sustainable diving the social norm through Green Fins; an initiative it runs in partnership with UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and 11 National Governments to help dive and snorkel operators become more sustainable; as well as educating tourists about best environmental practice. The initiative also provides the only internationally recognised environmental standards for snorkelling and scuba diving and enables policy makers to identify areas of high environmental risk within the industry. This means they can work with business owners to find a suitable solution to local threats.

As part of its Green Fins initiative, Reef-World provides a suite of tools and materials to help educate dive operators, dive professionals and divers about how they can be more environmentally friendly when diving. This toolbox of materials has been developed based upon requests or suggestions from the diving industry and is always being updated to ensure it conveys the Green Fins message as effectively as possible. Reef-World is committed to creating the materials that will be most useful for the diving industry and, for that reason, is calling for input from divers as part of its latest review.

JJ Harvey, Director at The Reef-World Foundation, said:

“The ethos at Reef-World – and of the Green Fins initiative – is to empower and educate the dive industry to protect coral reefs. We’re continually reviewing our materials to make sure they’re as useful and effective as possible for Green Fins members (and non-members!) who can download and use them for free. We’re now in the process of planning our next updates and we want to be sure our priorities fit with those of the wider Green Fins network by hearing from you: the dive industry. This activity was already in the pipeline for the Reef-World team and, while we realise this is a challenging time for many of our network, we hope those staying at home will be able to spare a few minutes to help. Completing the short survey will make a huge difference in our work to improve communications about sustainable diving and the protection of coral reefs. To everyone who is able to spare the time to help us, thank you.”

The survey can be taken online here

For more information about Reef-World’s Green Fins initiative, please click here. Dive and snorkel operators interested in signing up to Green Fins can find the membership application form.