At this time of year, outfitters, campgrounds and cabin rentals in the Petite-Nation begin preparing their websites for summer. Much of the copy we read relies on the same green vocabulary: eco-responsible, sustainable, in harmony with nature.
We approach those words with caution, and the reason is a dive centre on the other side of the world.
Last April, the Reef-World Foundation named Ceningan Divers the winner of the Green Fins Award 2025 for Outstanding Commitment to Sustainable Marine Tourism. Our founder, Robert Scales, co-founded that dive centre on Nusa Ceningan. It opened on August 1, 2015, so the award came a few months before its tenth anniversary. Almost none of what earned it would fit into one of those adjectives.
What does the Green Fins Award recognize?
Daily environmental practice, measured against a standard. Green Fins is the environmental standard for dive and snorkel operators, managed by the Reef-World Foundation. Members are assessed on how their daily operations affect the reef: mooring, briefings, waste, what guests are told and what they are allowed to touch. The score measures impact, so lower is better. Zero means no measurable negative impact.
The process is not glamorous. Most items on the checklist are never noticed by guests, which is partly why it works as a standard: it cannot be staged for photographs.
The award looked more broadly than the assessment. According to DIVE Magazine's report on the Green Fins Award 2025, entries were judged on sustainable business, reach and people, and public votes from divers and snorkellers were taken into account. Dev Albao, Reef-World's programmes manager, said of the team: "Sustainability isn't a marketing campaign for them; it's woven into their operations." Of everything written about the award, that statement best captures its meaning.
What does ten years of sustainable practice look like?
A series of small, consistent habits. Listed as milestones, it resembles a plan, although it did not unfold as one.
- 2015: the dive centre opens.
- 2018: Green Fins membership. The same year, a 68,000-litre rainwater reservoir.
- 2018 and 2019: BlueGreen360 Awards, Dive Operator of the Year and then Dive Resort of the Year, plus third place for best dive resorts at the Dive Travel Awards 2018.
- April 2020: the online Education Centre, with free conservation workshops, Project AWARE courses and PADI eLearning.
- February 2024: the fifth Green Fins assessment returns a zero score, making the centre the first member in Indonesia to reach it.
- 2025: the Green Fins Award.
The list does not show what happened between those milestones, which represents most of the work. No single-use plastic, which sounds simple until one tries to run a busy centre on a small island without it. Beach cleanups every week, including the weeks when motivation was low. Citizen science with the Marine Megafauna Foundation, which means guests and staff record what they observe rather than only photographing it.
None of these activities makes a compelling press release on its own. A single cleanup is routine; holding one every week for years is a different achievement.
Who actually earned the award?
The team and the community. An award like this hangs on a wall with the business's name on it, which can be misleading.
The briefings asking guests not to touch the coral are delivered by instructors and divemasters, many times a day, patiently, to people who have heard them before. The beach cleanups depend on the village as much as on the dive centre. The zero score in 2024 came from a boat crew doing things properly on ordinary weekdays, with no one from Green Fins observing.
Having founded the centre is a source of pride, but the credit for daily practice belongs to the people on site. The principle we would pass on from that experience is this: make the standards non-negotiable, then give the people who uphold them the room to do so.
What do guests actually respond to?
Participation. Few people book a dive trip because of a policy page. Guests book, and return, when they can take part in something: a cleanup, a manta identification session, a workshop. When we were helping dive operators with their social media in the early 2010s, it was already clear that guests share what they took part in and scroll past what they are lectured about. Nothing observed since has changed that conclusion.
What should happen after the recognition?
Continued improvement. The risk with awards in general is that they can feel like a finish line.
Green Fins assessments recur regularly. A zero is the result of one assessment, and the next one starts afresh. Staff change, new boats arrive, and a new supplier may again deliver goods wrapped in plastic. The only way to maintain a standard is to make it a routine, and routines become monotonous. The moment a routine becomes monotonous is the moment standards begin to slip.
A business that has just received recognition should take a week to appreciate it, then return to the checklist.
What can a small business in Quebec learn from a dive resort in Bali?
To describe concrete actions rather than use adjectives. Many businesses here depend on lakes, forests and the visitors who come for them: outfitters, campgrounds, cabins, restaurants with a view. The same logic applies.
Describe what you do, with dates and details, and leave out the adjectives. "We clean the shoreline every May, and here are the photos" is consistently more convincing than "we care deeply about the planet." There is now a legal dimension as well. Since the Competition Act amendments of June 2024, environmental claims in Canada are expected to be substantiated, so vague green marketing carries real risk in addition to sounding hollow.
For a business revising its website this winter, we recommend the following exercise: replace every green word on the site with the specific action it refers to. If there is no action to name, remove the word. The exercise is more demanding than it appears, and it is the most honest form of marketing strategy we know for a small business that wants to be recognized for something genuine.
Patience is also required. In Bali, it took close to ten years, and most of the result came from consistency rather than ingenuity.
The award is welcome recognition. The ordinary weekdays are what produced it.