PADI Advanced Open Water and Marine Conservation Teen Volunteer Program in Mexico

Your Impact

All of our programs have short, mid and long-term objectives that fit with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or UN SDGs. This enables us to report on our collaborative impact across the world in a streamlined manner, measuring which UN SDGs we are making a substantial contribution to. Furthermore, this will help our local partners and communities measure and visualise their contribution to the UN SDGs.

Upon arrival to base, you will be educated about the history of the UN SDGs. You will learn about the specific goals of your location, the long-, mid- and short-term objectives, and also clarification of how your personal, shorter-term involvement contributes to these goals on a global level.

Our aim is to educate you on local and global issues, so that you continue to act as active global citizens after your program, helping to fulfil our mission of building a global network of people united by their passion to make a difference.

Puerto Morelos is the oldest port city in the Mexican Caribbean. The port has been used since the time of the Mayan empire, but its history as a modern port began in 1898. It was built to enable the exportation of gum from the gum tree and the wood of the dye tree, an activity that together with fishing were the main productive activities in the area.

The area has a unique diversity of ecosystems including low evergreen jungles, low swamp jungles, savannahs, coastal dunes, mangroves, cenotes, beaches, marine grass, and coral reefs. The reef of Puerto Morelos is part of the Mesoamerican Reef System, MBRS, considered the second largest reef barrier in the world and home to thousands of marine species.

Today, Puerto Morelos is part of the 120 kilometer tourist corridor, located between Cancun and Tulum. Tourism is the main economic activity of Puerto Morelos and continues to grow due to the development of large hotels as well as holiday housing along its coast. Local tour operators offer scuba, snorkelling, and free diving tours in the Caribbean Sea and reef lagoon, tours of or diving in cenotes close to the town, as well as sport fishing tours.

Fishing is the second most common commercial activity after tourism. Fishermen fish using small skiffs collect many commercial Caribbean fish species and lobster. Local fishing organisations are aware that unsustainable fishing leads to a destruction of the reef, and therefore loss of fishing resources as well as harm to ecotourism activities.

GVI assists our partners in Puerto Morelos with collecting and collating data to assist decision makers in coastal zone management. We assist them with the manpower, logistical resources, and, in the case of the GVI Trust, finances.

Fish and Coral Surveys

We have several monitoring sites that we survey each year. At each monitoring site, we do 10 adult and juvenile fish transects and five coral community and point intercept transects. The data on fish we gather helps us determine the abundance and the size of fish and understand the changes in the fish community dynamics. The data on coral, and other sessile organisms like sponges and mussels, is used to understand the rate of recovery of the reef and its overall health. For four week short term interns the surveys will be simpler as we aim to gather high-quality data by focusing the learning on fish species while touching on other topics such as coral species. The aim of this is to collect biomass data and information on coral illnesses and bleaching.

Turtle Monitoring

The National Park of Puerto Morelos is abundant in seagrass which is one of the favourite meals of green sea turtles. GVI participants assist with monitoring sea turtle populations by taking pictures of them while snorkeling and diving. This helps with identifying both new and returning sea turtles. Sea turtle nesting season is from May to October.

Invasive Lionfish Monitoring and Eradication

Lionfish are an invasive species in the Mexican Caribbean. Lionfish eradication activities are carried on in coordination with local environmental authorities. Local authorities conduct lionfish spearfishing tournaments throughout the year in which we can participate or they assign us dates to carry out lionfish eradication on specific areas of the reef. Please note that this activity does not happen all year long.

Incidental Sightings of Megafauna

Every time we go on a dive we look for megafauna species such as sharks, dolphins, manatees, sea turtles, eels, and rays. We then input sighting of these species into our database. The presence of these species can be indicators of the health of the reef and general biodiversity.

Plastic Pollution Cleanup

We have weekly beach cleans where we collect the rubbish that washes up on our beach and classify it into different categories depending on their source. This information is recorded and sent to our partners for analysis.

Environmental Education

They also assist the community by conducting environmental education programs. The town of Puerto Morelos was once a fishing village, but is now part of one of the largest Marine Parks in Mexico. Fish is still an important food source in the community and fishing a common means of earning an income. Sustainable fishing methods and other means of protecting the natural environment are vital to maintaining the marine abundance that makes both fishing and international tourism profitable. Teaching young people and tour operators the importance of protecting their marine resources and how this can be done is vital to ensuring the future health of the reef off the coast of Puerto Morelos.

All these initiatives allow us to offer support to the conservation work, the community and our local partners, and to address many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as #4 – Quality Education and #14 – Life Below Water.

Please note: Both conservation- and community-focused programs are offered at this location.

Our Partners In Puerto Morelos Marine

Project Objectives