Participate in Adopt the Blue™ to protect your business, create opportunities for your community, and safeguard the natural beauty that first drew you to this industry.
The Problem and the Solution
The Problem: As a diving professional or business owner, your livelihood depends on the health of the marine environments your customers come to explore. However, these ecosystems are under threat from habitat loss, plastic pollution, overfishing, and climate change. While the challenges may seem overwhelming, you are not alone.
The Solution: As part of the global PADI® network, you have a powerful platform to drive change. Adopt the Blue is the world’s largest underwater conservation network, designed to amplify your local efforts on a global scale. By adopting your local dive site, you contribute vital data that supports scientific research and strengthens the case for creating and improving Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). This program not only helps secure legal marine protections but also monitors their effectiveness, ensuring sustainable solutions.
As a founding partner of the Adopt the Blue program, Blancpain has committed to funding an annual grant over the next five years that goes directly to MPA projects at ground level.
Joining Forces: Blancpain x PADI
The Economic Case – Adopt the Blue Can Secure Legal Protections That Support Your Business’s Profitability
The global diving industry represents billions of dollars in tourism revenue for coastal communities. This is revenue generated through marine life experiences that depend on healthy habitats flush with desirable species. By participating in Adopt the Blue, you identify dive tourism as an economic contributor in your region. With this data, PADI AWARE can push for policy changes that directly benefit your business.
In November 2022, PADI helped secure significant protection for requiem sharks at the 19th CITES meeting in Panama City. Following AWARE advocacy empowered by data from the PADI dive community, government representatives agreed to restrict international trade in all requiem sharks (one of the biggest families of species), all hammerhead sharks, and all guitar sharks, and to add an extra 60 species to the list of sharks protected by Appendix II.
“As divers, we hold the keys to marine conservation for our local community who can’t all see what we can. The outcome of CITES shows just how powerful our voice can be when we stand up and come together to achieve a common goal.” Jack Fishman, Community & Campaigns Manager at PADI AWARE.
The Environmental Case – Adopt the Blue Goes Beyond Establishing Marine Protections; It Provides Ongoing Monitoring to Ensure These Protections Are Effective
This cross-issue program unites global data in one accessible platform, allowing scientists to conduct vital research utilizing data that would otherwise be too costly or logistically impossible to collect. By participating in local underwater monitoring through your Adopt the Blue site, you contribute to a real-time database of ecosystem health across 2,000+ marine sites. The research enabled by this unprecedented database not only supports the creation of new MPAs but also provides ongoing feedback to governments on the effectiveness of existing MPAs, ensuring interventions are effective and policies are truly impactful. It’s citizen science with a purpose—directly informing science and policy to achieve lasting solutions.
With the threat of a massive coral bleaching event across the Caribbean in the summer of 2023, NOAA Coral Reef Watch was in need of real-time data and observations of coral bleaching on local reefs to determine how well Coral Reef Watch satellite-based heat stress products were performing. By February 2024, divers from eight participating centers across Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Costa Rica, and Bonaire had conducted over 51 surveys in their Adopt the Blue sites. This provided NOAA with real-time, underwater data on coral bleaching to inform their system and response strategy.
“The collaboration of PADI AWARE Foundation’s Adopt the Blue and NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch engages the diving community as collaborators in the scientific data collection that will lead to the identification and monitoring of bleaching-resilient corals and coral reefs,” said Dr. Derek P. Manzello, Ph.D., Coordinator, NOAA Coral Reef Watch.
A similar initiative is currently in progress across Asia Pacific.
Your participation in similar monitoring efforts through Adopt the Blue helps create real-time insights into ecosystem health, informing policy and ensuring lasting environmental protection.
For example, Beqa Adventure Divers, in receipt of a PADI AWARE Community Grant, conducted crucial surveys at their adopted site Fiji Shark Marine Reserve to assess the impact of poaching during the COVID pandemic. By comparing current fish population data with pre-pandemic records, they identified shifts in species dynamics, providing essential insights to local authorities for improving MPA protections.
Elsewhere, AWARE Grant recipients and Adopt the Blue participants Acqua Sub, a PADI 5-Star Instructor Development Center in Brazil, are conducting surveys within the Setiba MPA. Acqua Sub conducted 25 field expeditions using scuba, freediving, and remote monitoring to evaluate fish populations and seabed conditions. Findings revealed variations in fish populations, identifying high biodiversity areas and potential stress zones. This data was crucial for guiding local government policies and enhancing MPA management.
“I believe that this grant signals the start of future action implemented with the local community, encouraging participation as citizen scientists,” states Ivan Costa Santos, founder of Acqua Sub. “I will consider this work a success if it can convince the local government of the need to increase environmental enforcement and expand the Setiba MPA”.
PADI AWARE Community Grant Program
Social Benefits – Adopt the Blue Can Create Life-Changing Opportunities for Your Friends and Family
By participating in Adopt the Blue, you invite PADI AWARE to partner with you, your community, and government to create greater local marine protections. For instance, Small Island Nation PADI member’s involvement in Adopt the Blue highlighted their urgent need for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). As a result, in 2023, AWARE focused on a proof of concept for MPA creation in Small Island Nations, starting with Barbados. Collaborating with local PADI members, they led community workshops on coral restoration, marine debris removal, and species monitoring to meet protection targets set by the national government.
This flagship MPA project in Barbados not only protects marine ecosystems but also empowers future ocean guardians. With more than 80% of the local population in Barbados unable to swim, AWARE committed to providing water awareness training to 500 local children. To date, more than 300 children have participated. Shortly after the PADI Swim School sessions, six teenagers from the program expressed interest in becoming PADI certified. “Every child who participates in the PADI AWARE swim program is given the opportunity to not only become a future dive professional, but also an ocean guardian in Barbados,” explains Andre Miller, community partner and owner of Barbados Blue, a PADI 5-Star Dive Resort. “In the end, we will protect what we can see.”
In 2024, AWARE aims to expand this collaboration nationally and integrate youth programs into broader marine protection plans. The success in Barbados provides a scalable, effective model for global MPA development.
Join Us
By adopting your local dive site(s), you’re not just protecting the ocean—you’re securing the future of your business and leading your community to a more resilient future.
Learn More About Adopt the Blue
By Emma Hetherington, PADI Environment & Sustainability Specialist
