I recently learned that my city’s Disaster Risk Reduction & Management Office (DRRMO) has a dive team. According to the city’s environmental office they do weekly cleanup dives.

I have confirmed that cleanup dives happen, although they do not seem to occur weekly. In fact, I can’t seem to find out when the next one will be. I have been messaging multiple people and I have visited the office twice, but so far to no avail.

I don’t know when the cleanup dives started, but there is great incentive these days to show environmental efforts because of the government’s shutdown of Boracay, perhaps the top travel destination in the Philippines. Other tourist destinations seem to have been implementing proactive measures to prevent enduring similar fates.

Basically, Boracay became an overdeveloped environmental disaster, with extremely high levels of fecal coliform in its waters. Everyone has been dumping their solid waste right into the water. Other areas have been testing high (including my area) but not quite as high as Boracay yet.

So, hopefully I’ll have some blog posts soon about my direct efforts to help the city. Volunteering for anything around here tends to be exercises in frustration, but I will persist. I have my favorite mesh bag, my scale, and my camera ready to go….