Our Story

Born from the Deep Sea

DCA founder, Swietenia Puspa Lestari, grew up in one of the small islands on the northern part of Jakarta, Indonesia. Scuba diving became a huge part of her life since she was 9 years old and this fuels her love for the ocean. As she grew older, she witnessed and realized there are many obstacles and challenges in preserving the ocean, and cleanup is not enough. This prompted her idea to gather more divers to collaborate, starting from keeping the ocean free of marine debris, and became the start of Divers Clean Action.

For the sake of the ocean

Co-founders Nesha Ichida and Adi Septiono joined the force and in 2015 DCA conducted their first clean-up mapping activity with more than 100 volunteers joining, both by the beach and underwater. As time passed the enthusiasm of volunteers and collaborators persuaded DCA to eventually become a foundation, with the name Yayasan Penyelam Lestari Indonesia. Now we have the support of thousands of volunteers across the Southeast Asia region by developing 4 main programs.

We are going to fight until 2050 where plastic will NOT outweigh the fish in the ocean.

Our Program

Research

Our clean-up results will be converted to data. We also collaborate with research organizations to develop more date regarding marine debris in Indonesia. Check out those data on www.marinedebris.id.

Campaign & Workshop

To spread awareness and train how to combat marine debris, we held workshops and trainings to ocean enthusiasts. In 2017 we held the first-ever Indonesian Youth Marine Debris Summit, and in 2018 we co-host YSEALI Regional Workshop: Marine Debris Expedition.