PADI AWARE Foundation

22/10/2026

Five Insta360 X5 Invisible Dive Bundles.
Twenty species between you and the draw.

Every shark and ray you’ve ever photographed counts. Old sightings, new sightings, that blurry nurse shark from 2019. Upload them to the PADI AWARE App or at action.padiaware.org and each verified species brings you closer to Census Pioneer status.

Hit 20 different species with photo proof and you’re in the draw. The winners come from the Pioneers only, so this one rewards the divers who go looking.

What you could be diving with: the X5, a dive case that disappears completely in 360 shots, the 114 cm Invisible Selfie Stick for third person views underwater, plus a floating hand grip and wrist strap. Stitching stays seamless down to 60 m.

The small print that matters: the deadline is 30 November, and every sighting is reviewed before it’s approved, so don’t leave the upload until the last week. Winners will hear from us directly.

Your logbook is already full of entries. Time to make them count. 🦈

Prizes sponsored by Insta360

ScubaDiving SharkConservation

21/10/2026

Most days, you can’t dive here at all. 
Saltstraumen, Arctic Norway.

The strongest tidal current on the planet pushes 3,000 cubic metres of water a second through a gap a few hundred metres wide.
Divers get a short window at slack water, then the ocean takes the channel back. 
It is one of the richest places in the North Atlantic. Which is exactly why the anglers come. And why so much of their gear never comes back up. 

Fredric Ihrsen and Borghild Viem at Nord&Ne have spent 2026 going down to look. 72 Dive Against Debris surveys across 11 sites. 96.6% of what they logged was fishing gear. 1,805 lures. That is 24.3% of every lure recorded in the programme worldwide this year, from one Norwegian channel. The next highest reporter logged 413. 
They are not doing it to tidy up. Saltstraumen has been a marine protected area since 2013, but there is still no general restriction on recreational fishing inside it. The surveys are the argument, and the exhibition outside the dive centre is where that argument meets the anglers face to face. 

Across 2026, 606 reporting accounts have logged 2,091 surveys in 77 countries. More than 36 tonnes of debris, item by item. Nord&Ne turned 72 of those dives into evidence a government can read. 

Tag a dive centre near you that is doing this work. And if you want your own dives to count the same way, Dive Against Debris is open to every diver, anywhere, at any depth.

🌊 

20/10/2026

14/10/2026

The cyclone hit in November. Samith was cleaning until July. 🌊

After Cyclone Ditwah flooded Trincomalee, Samith Fernando and his team at Kalpitiya Diving Center went back to the same reefs again and again. 36 surveys. 230 diver participations. 40.9 hours of bottom time. 6,7 tonnes of Debris removed.

What they pulled up: 6,244 fishing nets, 4,468 grocery bags, 4,310 trash bags, 2,922 pieces of fishing line, 2,843 bottles, and nearly 7,900 pieces of cloth, towels, burlap and carpet. They also found 95 animals entangled: 68 crustaceans and 27 fish.

A reef isn’t cleaned once. It’s looked after.

Leave Samith a thank you below. 👇

06/10/2026

Diver and runner? This one's for you 🏃‍♀️ Diver who's always said "one day" about a marathon? Also for you.

Liz Parkinson, freediver, shark conservationist 🦈 and our longtime marathon captain, crossed the LA Marathon finish line in 2026. On March 7, 2027, she's back as team captain, and we want you on her team.

Commit to raising $650 for PADI AWARE and your registration fee on us. Guaranteed entry, plus a PADI AWARE runner pack. 26.2 miles from Dodger Stadium to Century City.

What you raise backs the divers who log what's changing below the surface and gets that record in front of the people deciding what happens to the ocean next. The reef you dived last year, still there for the next diver. That's the real finish line.

Two divers are already in. Eight places left. Your calves will complain. The ocean won't.

👉 Join the team: bit.ly/padiaware-la

29/09/2026

You call yourself a shark expert?
Join Global Shark and Ray Census Pioneer and shark expert Gillian Shark | shark photography in putting your shark experiences to good use for science and conservation!
Think you can challenge her? The challenge is still open!
Comment ‘Pioneer’ and we’ll send you all the details to join!

28/09/2026

This is what local diving communities can do.

This AWARE Week, the PADI Taiwan and Hong Kong team brought together 15 PADI Dive Centers, Garmin’s diving community, and 363 divers for two PADI Conservation Days in Taiwan and Hong Kong. They removed 1,210 kg of marine debris. In Taiwan, it was the biggest Conservation Day of the year, rain and all.

Thank you to the team who made it happen, every dive center, Garmin’s diving community, and every diver who showed up.

Now imagine this at every dive site. 💙
PADI Chinese

24/09/2026

Did you know you can help sharks from the comfort of your Couch?

For many sharks and rays, the data barely exists. For some species, there’s none at all — and you can’t protect what you can’t see.

That’s the gap the Global Shark & Ray Census closes. Your camera roll is data. Every shark or ray you capture below the surface becomes part of the population science that reaches conservation decisions.

See it. Capture it. Log it. Zero-sighting dives count. Old dive-log photos count. You don’t need to be a scientist.

Every dive counts. Comment DIVE and we’ll send you everything you need to log your first sighting. 🦈

The Global Shark & Ray Census backed by · Powered by divers. From the seafloor to the policy table.

20/09/2026

97,697 pieces. 46.8 tonnes. 2,352 surveys across 1,183 dive sites.

That is the Dive Against Debris record for 2026 so far, and every piece of it was counted by a diver.

Swipe for what they found. 57% of the top ten items was single use consumer packaging. Bags, wrappers, filters, bottles. Not fishing gear.

That is the argument. Packaging is decided upstream, and four years of UN talks have not produced a treaty. The next negotiating round runs March 2027. We will be in the room with this data, and every signature makes it louder.

Sign the petition. Link in bio.

20/09/2026

Happy Global Cleanup Day!

Underwater cleanups are not just important to take care of our oceans, but can be incredibly fun!

Have a look what , & got up to for international coastal cleanup day