DIVING NEWS
Tioman named greenest dive-centre
Rosie Cotton of Tioman Dive Centre.
Tioman Dive Centre in Malaysia has been declared the world’s greenest centre, after winning the annual Green Fins Award for the member of the scheme with the lowest proven environmental impact.
The award was announced by the Reef-World Foundation, international coordinator of the Green Fins environmental initiative.
Winners are chosen based on a “rigorous assessment” of the business practices of all 500 Green Fins member-companies, most of which are located in the Asia-Pacific region, to determine their environmental impact.
21 April 2019
Tioman Dive Centre, a PADI operation, has been a Green Fins member for 10 years. It was said to have been proactive in improving its sustainability and minimising negative impact on coral reefs.
The biggest investment had been to replace two-stroke engines on one of the centre’s boats with more fuel-efficient four-stroke units. Other steps included switching to environmentally friendly cleaning products, educating staff in environmental protection, reducing use of single-use plastics, correcting guests’ bad behaviour on dives, logging all data from clean-ups and communicating the policy effectively to customers.
“We’ve been working hard to try to instil in our staff a desire to protect the environment, both above and under water,” said owner and General Manager Rosie Cotton. “As soon as the staff truly believe in this, becoming a Green Fins dive-centre becomes easy.
“We encourage our staff to come up with new ideas to help us improve our Green Fins rating and we’ve found it gives them a great deal of pride when their idea is implemented.”
Cotton said that the environmental approach had become “a part of everyday life and we hope this is seen by all our divers, in our diving practices. Since becoming a Green Fins member, we have seen a significant increase in numbers of divers.”
Green Fins is implemented in Malaysia through the state and Reef Check Malaysia.
