We love a challenge here at Downbelow, especially if that challenge is a threat to our environment and playground.

We're in the midst of an IDC at the moment, but during one of our dives, the candidates spotted a net entangled on reef and sandy patch at a depth of about 25m.

After a quick look, freeing some horse-shoe crabs as they went, they vowed to return and remove the net.  Alerting our resident PADI Course Director Richard to the rubbish on our ocean floor, the plan was set in motion.

Last week Downbelow encountered a particularly nasty net that choked one of the best looking and healthiest reefs in the marine park here off Kota Kinabalu in Sabah.

After reporting it to the relevant authorities, we rounded up our crew and eager Divemaster interns, and set off to un-choke the reef.

Resident PADI Course Director Richard Swann lead the charge on the net that entangled the reef starting from a shallow coral block near the top, down to the sandy bottom at 35m.

Our May Borneo Adventure group camped over at our PADI 5 Star IDC Dive Centre on Gaya island just off shore Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.

The brand new divers busied themselves with Open Water courses, whilst already-qualified divers went on to do their Advanced Diver course.

The weather here in Borneo was near perfect for most of the days the group camped out at Downbelow's Beach House, making it very easy to appreciate nature's bounty both onshore and below the surface.

This year we are hosting 2 waves of the next group of University of Glamorgan students at our PADI 5 Star IDC Dive Centre on Gaya island.

This week we saw the departure of the 1st wave, who spent 8 days with us on the island, collecting research data on the corals and sea grass near our dive centre.

As all our group programs contain an ecological awareness element, our groups often pitch in to give something back to the environment, usually by taking something, rubbish, away.