Nassim Al Baher at Raouché: Awareness Activity Alongside the Bat Cave Cleanup

A cleanup can remove what doesn’t belong in the sea. But what about everything that led it there in the first place?

That was the question we carried to Raouché this past Saturday, through Nassim Al Baher. Fair Trade Lebanon joined “From Cleanup to Protection,” an initiative by SWIM Initiative and Calypso Diving Center to clean the Bat Cave and the surrounding caves of Raouché Rock, where waste had been piling up for decades. The morning also drew the Minister of Environment Tamara ElZein, the Minister of Information Paul Morcos, the Mayor of Beirut Ibrahim Zeidan and the Governor of Beirut Marwan Abboud.

While divers and volunteers worked to clear the caves, we set up on the shore with a different kind of task: awareness. Our interactive question wheel invited volunteers, participants and passersby to test what they know about marine life and pollution. A day of action became a day of learning too, and a chance to see the sea a little differently.

The two efforts, side by side, shared one purpose. Protecting a coastline means looking beyond the waste we can remove. It also means understanding the ecosystems around us, the pressures they face, and the part each of us plays in protecting them.

Through Nassim Al Baher, funded by l’Agence française de développement (AFD), Fair Trade Lebanon will keep bringing marine awareness into community spaces, making the link between what happens on land and the health of the sea harder to overlook.