SEVENSEAS Travel Magazine has been working in close collaboration with The Reef-World Foundation, international coordinators of the Green Fins initiative, since 2016.
This year we are promoting the hard work and commitment it involves to be a Top Ten member with a series of short interviews.
When your dive centre was created did you envision including environmental practices as a core part of your business?
BADLADZ Dive Resort was formed around 16 years ago so before Green Fins was around I’m sure. There have been a few different owners over the years so of course I can’t speak for the previous owners but for me the answer is 100% YES. I became involved with BADLADZ at the very start that Green Fins were starting out in the Philippines so you guys made it very easy for me to use environmental practices in our business plan. Mostly with the material you gave us to help show our customers how and why not to damage the reef. Also with the different members of your team advising us on how we could do better. I was very new to diving at the time so the advice you gave me was extremely helpful.
What was your first impression of the Green Fins initiative and how has it evolved through time?
I was very happy for your team to come by for a chat and was always very willing for them to come out on a dive with us. Unfortunately I don’t get to dive some much anymore so it was great to have someone outside of my dive staff to let me know how we are doing out on the dives. I always got great feed back for your team, so if we needed to improve on anything we were instructed rather than told how we could do better. If I remember correctly we always had a pretty low score but with your advise and tips we were able to become a top 10 member.
What is the main benefit you’ve found by being a Green Fins member?
All the staff and myself are very passionate about the water and the life within it. Having your material is a big help to get the message across to our guests that we are serious about protecting the reef with our rules on on touching and promoting good buoyancy. With our Advanced Open Water course we always suggest Peak Performance Buoyancy as 1 of there 5 adventure dives. We find the guests are very happy doing this and no matter if the student has done just 4 dives or 100 dives before taking the course they always finish up being a better diver and much more aware of there impact on the sea life. We do not in counter many situations were we have to stop or cancel a dive as the guests are fully aware on our rules using your info cards, also my staff know that I have there back if a guest doesn’t do as we ask of them. Unfortunately this is not the case in some dive shops in the area. I am very happy to say in the 7 years of working at Badladz I have not had to cancel a dive or ban a diver because of there behaviour. A polite suggestion from the dive master to the guest to watch there fins seems to be enough. This could be for several reasons but I am very sure a major reason is what it means to be a member of green fins and our positive attitude and being aware that we are guests in this environment so it is our responsibility as professional divers to do everything we can to limit our impact.
Can you tell us the biggest challenge of implementing the Code of Conduct on your day-to-day business practices?
As I said before I and very lucky that 99.9% of my guests are very happy to follow our ways of how we operate so I really don’t have many problems implementing the Code of Conduct to our guests. In fact we have many guests that are very pleased that we have these rules as other dive shops around the world they have dove with before did not have as much care for the sea life. I do get some inquiries about being able to spear fish or request bread or rice to feed the fish. I have no problems letting them know the reasons why we don’t and why they should not do this. Again this is not a big problem for me as this happens very rarely with the guests we attract. Is this because the guests are aware we are a member of green fins? I don’t know but for sure guests who are aware would not contact us if we were not members.
Have you noticed a significant change on the diving industry in your location thanks to the presence of Green Fins?
In short yes. Any fellow dive shop owner friends of mine are members and have the same attitude as me so not having Green fins around would only be a bad thing. Unfortunately dive shops who are not members are the ones who are most likely not to care about what there guests are doing. Speaking with many shop owners we would be happy to have to pay a fee to the local government which would be apart of our business license that we must be a member of Green Fins. If you don’t agree to be a member then you do not receive your license. I am fully aware this is not an approach that Green Fins can or does have towards local governments but if there were something like this in place I would guest there would be many dive shop owners more than happy to pay.
Do you think tourists are now more likely to choose environmentally friendly dive centres that work hard to protect the marine environment?
I believe most will, there are always going to be tourists picking a certain place because of cost rather than there diving practices. Having said that I am seeing more divers come to our shop because of our reviews on tripadvisor with our previous guests complementing us on how we operate in regards to our care for the environment.
What does it mean to you to be a Green Fins Top 10 member?
My Staff and myself are extremely proud to be a top 10 member. It’s no joke that we all love our job and feel very privileged to be able to show our guests the amazing life we have in the ocean. For me it’s not about recognition of our hard work to promote good diving behaviour but it stands for that we do care so if we care more than likely our guests will follow. If they didn’t care before they dove with us I am sure they do at the end of their trip. For me that is the most important thing, the education and making more people aware of there impact. Of course we have many guests who are very good divers and care about what they are doing but i feel we have done are job when we teach someone better buoyancy for example and making them aware that there actions do have an effect on marine life. I believe being a top 10 member makes that easier for us.
