Protecting What You Love Has Never Been Easier

Taking place 17-25 September 2022, the fifth annual AWARE Week encourages and inspires the global dive community to lead or take part in conservation activities and courses focused on local action for global impact. The global event will advance the PADI Conservation Blueprint that charts a decade of conservation action in direct support of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

PADI, together with the publicly funded global charity PADI AWARE Foundation, aims to take existing programs – Vulnerable Species Protection, Marine Debris, and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) – to the next level, with the new Dive Against Debris course, and conservation actions, such as PADI AWARE’s new Flagship Program, Adopt The Blue.

Get Involved This AWARE Week

The power of PADI AWARE lies in you – passionate Professional Divers with first-hand experience of the ocean and a desire to protect it. Here’s how you can take local action for global impact, this AWARE Week, and beyond. 

Protect What You Love, With Adopt The Blue

This year, PADI AWARE launched Adopt The Blue. The world’s largest network of underwater sites for ocean conservation, to Dive Centers, Resorts, and Professional Members around the world. This critical network will serve as a driving force for establishing new marine protected areas around the globe. Participants in the program will be called upon to take targeted local action for measurable global impact. This direct approach to local conservation challenges will also create more opportunities for all Ocean Torchbearers to engage in fins-on conservation activities.

We Need Your Help

Adopt The Blue will protect the ocean and help strengthen local dive communities across the planet. This program, managed by PADI AWARE Foundation, will expand on the former Adopt a Dive Site initiative and actively support PADI Members like you to take local action for global ocean conservation.

See Your Blue In Action

Once you have chosen your site and applied successfully, the information will be displayed on the global map.

This will include:

Site Name
GPS Coordinates
Type of Ecosystem
The Main Conservation Issue at the Site
Your Social Media Accounts & Dive Center/PADI Pro Website Information

Ready To Make Your Dives Count? Download the PADI AWARE App

Help keep your favorite dive site free of debris and contribute to the largest global underwater database in the world. To achieve our goal of reducing marine debris by 50% in targeted countries by 2030, we need everyone to work together at all levels. We have just passed more than 2,000,000 pieces of trash removed from waters around the world. There has never been a better time to take action.

Your action can be completed in the new PADI AWARE App. (Found on the Apple Store or Google Play)

The NEW Dive Against Debris® Course – Now With eLearning

The new Dive Against Debris course is here. Any PADI Junior Open Water Diver, Freediver, or Advanced Mermaid or higher can take the Dive Against Debris Speciality course and help tackle marine debris issues head-on. Become a diver to join the world’s largest underwater citizen science movement on the planet. 

Through this course, you’ll be able to participate in regular Dive Against Debris surveys and become part of the solution. You can now offer the Dive Against Debris Specialty as a digital product to your customers and as an easy add on to your PADI Advanced Open Water Courses. 

What Is New With The Dive Against Debris® Specialty?

The course has a PADI eLearning component, revised lesson guides and supporting materials for both students and instructors.
The citizen science component has new upgrades to the PADI AWARE app making submissions more user friendly.
Dive Against Debris will remain a one-dive, standardized Adventure Specialty, and instructors will be able to immediately teach the course.
In addition, an actual survey and submission of the survey is a required course component.
The course will be available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Simplified Chinese and Russian.

Submit Your Data

PADI AWARE Foundation’s policy work helps advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG 14 – Life Below Water. To do so, quality data is required. As divers, we have the skills to gather data that no other community can.

By acting as citizen scientists, our data is instrumental in achieving the protection our ocean and its inhabitants need. Don’t let your dives go to waste. Submit your data and make your dives count.

Want to visualize your Dive Against Debris® Action? Check out the Dive Against Debris Action Map.

Fundraise for AWARE

Who makes the greatest impact for ocean protection? You do! When you become a fundraiser, you take the future of our ocean into your own hands. The opportunities to raise funds are vast.

By organizing fundraising events of any size with your dive buddies or local community, you are playing a vital role in advancing programs that save the ocean. Without fundraisers like you, this work would not be possible. 

All PADI AWARE Foundation’s work is made possible by generous donors like you. This AWARE Week, consider contributing to the funds needed to advance our Blueprint for Ocean Action. 

Your funds will enable the creation of new programs tackling climate change, marine protected areas, and coral restoration, while taking our existing programs – Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Marine Debris – to the next level. 

Share Your Stories & Events

The PADI AWARE community chooses to be ocean optimists. Together, our actions – big or small – can and do inspire and empower others all over the globe to join our mission to save the ocean. 

Tag @paditv and @padiaware on your social media stories and posts and use the following hashtags to tell us your AWARE week stories and be featured in our social media posts and celebratory photo albums!

#AWAREWeek
#SaveTheOcean 
#DiveAgainstDebris
#AdoptTheBlue

Local AWARE Week Events

PADI Dive Centers, Resorts, and Professionals are hosting events all over the world. Take inspiration from the actions above, and host your events on the PADI Conservation Activities Locator. Help your community and passionate divers around the globe take action in the waters you love.

Virtual Events

Whatever your circumstances, consider planning conservation events online, for a week’s worth of inspiring, educational and useful talks that help you make a greater positive impact on your community and our shared ocean. 

The post AWARE Week 2022: How To Take Action appeared first on PADI Pros.

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