The Aqualife Award Day this Friday gave me the opportunity to go diving on Tioman island last weekend. The island is situated just of the coast of Malaysia and a 3 hours drive from Singapore. There is plenty of wildlife in the water and locals understand that having these reefs can provide them a good income through tourism. Downside is that with so many unexperienced divers and snorkelers in the water that the corals can get damaged too.
You can be a good eco tourist by doing the following:
1. Don’t stand on corals
2. Don’t touch corals
3. Dont bring corals home
4. Don’t wear sunscreen in the water
5. Don’t wear insect repellant in the water
6. as a diver, practice your buoyancy in open water not in a coral garden

I didn’t take only pictures of the resident turtles but I came across this large fishing net that covered the corals. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my gloves and equipment to remove the net but I notified the diveshop in PayaBeach and asked if they like to organize dive cleanups.
Remember third week of September worldwide people are taking action to clean up the beach. You can join. Just check www.oceanconservancy.org

Fourhundred people arrived on May 16th at Nanzhui Beach. Amazing to see so many people at one spot working together to make a change. The volunteers from SISU and Tongji and Danghua university cleaned up approximately 2 kilometers of beach in 1.5 hours.

In July we will publish the report of items we have found on pollution.marinedream.org. Again we found many shoes ..

We have send out yesterday our requests for the raffle prizes and we have today:
2 pairs Nike ID shoes + t-shirts
6 pairs of CROCS
Dinner voucher PRIME restaurant

To be confirmed:
spa voucher, spa three on the bund
brunch voucher Whampoa Club

Shauna will keep you updated on sustainable/unsustainable fish farming practices in this blog and which fish are environmentally ok to eat in Shanghai. The teammembers have called 30 restaurants so far to check what is on the menu, 90 more to go and they went to a fish market to record what types of fish there are sold. This weekend they will go to another fishmarket to do more research.

We will have another meeting with the Fisheries University and talking to potential fish suppliers now. Also ICS meeting tomorrow if we can do the promotion of sustainable fish through their “Who is the Chef” program.

Aqualife Xplore project .. we will check the beach cleanup place this Friday and hopefully we can swing by the Port of Shanghai as well. 250 people already signed up to join. 100 more to go

Freetrees website is up and running - final testing tomorrow and final check of the database. On Monday we will email schools in Shanghai to join!

On track .. but still waiting for DVD from Martin Strel which is send from Slovenia last week .. for our charity event on the 17th.

14 of the 18 schools in Singapore started the Aqualife program - they have another 11 days to finish and then we announce the winners!

Finally ready to go online and start earning trees ..

This website is designed according to our slogan “Conservation through Education”.

With this project we want to achieve:
1. Environmental sustainability; planting trees helps the fight against Climate Change which the biggest threat to our coral reef
2. Education for everyone
3. Reduce poverty in Inner Mongolia by planting the trees in this region through the Roots and Shoots program.

Free trees?
Yes, all players can earn points for each good question and when players together reach the amount of 10,000 points we will plant a real tree. The trees are paid for by webvertising.

For who is this game developed?
Chinese elementary students can use it as a tool to improve their Pinyin level while working towards a greener China.

If you don’t speak Chinese yet, but like to learn it then this is a great starting point! Each question shows a character and you can listen to the pronounciation and read the English translation.

During the development process we tried to make an eye-friendly user interface acceptable for both kids and adults.

I especially like our logo—the smiling tree. It’s super cute~ with a shining Colgate teeth. LOL~

You can use this picture to promote our program. It’s only because of you that we can make things happen.

Go to freetrees.marinedream.org and put it in your bookmark—–

This is a website that deserves your bookmarking.