Facing the general decline of coral reefs ecosystems, preserving the marine biodiversity of the Philippines is critical. Marine monitoring of the underwater resources is key to protecting them, creating a baseline reference of their state of health and allowing to assess priority areas and track effectiveness of conservation efforts. 

Read more about our marine monitoring efforts here.

Program overview

Our marine monitoring volunteering program is for participants yearning to learn more about environmental conservation and marine ecosystems and interested to grow skills to participate in protecting it. This is a program for ocean passionates that are already certified scuba divers (or wanting to become divers) and are enthusiastic about diving almost every day for weeks while learning and developing environmental skills. You need to be fit and an ocean lover.

This program is designed to start from a broad and general overview of environmental conservation before slowly diving into more specialized trainings in order to learn and integrate technical knowledge gradually. The program is meant to teach in depth knowledge about coral reef health and help volunteers develop the skills to participate in our coral reef monitoring.

By participating in this program, you are directly supporting our environmental conservation efforts and will be assisting our marine conservation team in monitoring the health and resilience of coral reefs in local Marine Protected Areas of Siquijor.

Pre-requisites

• This program is only available for scuba divers that fit these requirements
  • An advanced open water certification (PADI, SSI, RAID, CMAS, etc.) is required*.
  • and a minimum of 30 dives including at least one this year OR a buoyancy refresher training (2 dives) with CRCP done this year*.
  • Good general fitness allowing to dive 5 days / week, carry your own gear (we are shore diving), swim comfortably with or without scuba gear

* (You do not fit the requirements? No worries, just contact us for advices. We provide scuba dive / free diving and snorkeling refreshers and certifications should you need it: learn more)

Timelines and price

It takes time to learn to recognize and be able to collect scientifically accurate data on coral reefs and its critters and the time you will need also varies depending on your profile, previous dive experience and learning speed.. As well as how much you wish to actually participate in our monitoring program when your training is completed. The longer you will stay, the more confident you will become and the more you will be able to contribute.

To join this program, our minimum stay is 4 weeks for divers that already fit the pre-requisites. We should warn you, 4 weeks goes really fast, and you will mostly spend you time training and learning and might feel that you do not have much time left to apply and contribute at the end (usually 1 week or less). If you can, we highly recommend that you stay for 6 or 8 weeks, this will make a huge difference in terms of contribution and how confident you become.

Package price is as follows:

What you will learn:	4 weeks	8 weeks	12 weeks	16 weeks
Reef substrate monitoring	Minimum stay 30k per week	29k per week	27k per week	25k per week
Reef fish monitoring	–	–	28k per week	26k per week
Divemaster and reef monitoring	–	–	–	25k per week

Why is it not free?

We provide free-volunteering opportunities (not including gear rental, accommodation or meals) for volunteers that are already having all of the required scientific skills and can actively help our work without any training required from our part. If you believe this is your situation, click here. However, if you are looking for helping our scientific work with no prior skills, this means that it will take time for you to learn and catch up on these fascinating work. We are happy to share our time and passion. While training you, we provide a package including accommodation, meals, dive gear and training fees, so that it also supports our conservation efforts. Read more about this topic on our blog post here.

Are you struggling with time requirements?

In CRCP, we always believe that time should not hinder in helping the environment. If you lack time and cannot do it in 1 go, we can split the training in 2 or 3 sets in the span of 1 year. We are happy to adapt to your preferred schedule. The only thing that matters to us : is that at the end of our training, you are a skilled and confident citizen scientist diver, able to participate in coral reef monitoring efforts accurately.

Minimum course format & inclusions

• 1 week of immersion program
• 2 weeks of monitoring training with daily conservation and ecology lectures + field activities on week days
• 1 week of substrate surveys participation in our coral reef monitoring program
• 30+ dives per month, 5 working days (week-ends off)
• Complete scuba gear rental and marine environment fees
• Basic accommodation (dorm type) throughout your stay, breakfast, lunch are included on week days
• Not included:
  • Dinner is not included (you will have access to many restaurant options for all budget and style starting from 100php a meal in canteen)
    

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Interested? Contact us!