Thailand Ecology Project

Posted on 26th February 2019

Seventeen students and three staff travelled to Koh Chang, Thailand’s largest island, located in the eastern province of Trat. Whilst there the students engaged in 3 main activities: education; terrestrial and aquatic debris removal; and conservation.

In total 11 passed the PADI Open Water course and learned to dive, 3 students passed the PADI Advanced Open Water diver course and 6 passed the PADI Wreck Speciality course. It was a very intensive period and students did very well to master the new skills required.

In the middle of the week students completed two environmental clean-up projects. The first of these was with the Koh Chang Trash Hero movement. This global initiative aims to spread awareness about pollution by cleaning the local environment. The Aiglon team were part of the organisation that helped clean the Klong Kloi beach area, removing around 25 large bags of rubbish. This was followed by a Dive Against Debris. Students took to the water just outside the Koh Rang national marine park and removed rubbish that was building up on the local reefs.

The third element of the trip saw students involved in the PADI Coralwatch program. During these dives the students learned how to survey the health of the coral reef and collected data. On the surface this data was collated and sent to the University of Queensland, Australia, for their ongoing reef monitoring projects.