Diving, pearl mollusk exploring tours a recommendation for visitors to Nha Trang

A local firm is offering tours that provide tourists with the chance to experience sea diving and behold pearl-yielding mollusks in the city, which is the capital of Khanh Hoa Province, according to Radio the Voice of Vietnam.

Ho Thanh Tuan, director of Hoang Gia Pearl Farming Co., told the radio that unlike most seas in the world, which host only a certain variety of pearl-yielding mollusk, scientists have detected a wide array of such varieties in Vietnam.

Tuan owns a system of pearl mollusk farms considered among the country’s largest. His farms span from the central to the southern coastline.

He has also launched tours in which tourists will enjoy diving in the sea and explore how pearl mollusks are cultivated.

Tourists can also catch the invertebrate and slice them open to get their pearls.

Tuan said his tours not only bring tourists an intriguing experience but also enhance their knowledge of pearl mollusks to keep them from being cheated into buying fake or freshwater pearls.

The tours are part of a project which provincial authorities have assigned to Tuan’s company and the Hon Tam Tourism Complex, also located in Nha Trang.

Sustainable diving

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which acts as a catalyst, advocate, educator and facilitator to promote the wise use and sustainable development of the global environment, selected Nha Trang as the location for its project called “Green Fins” in 2013.

The project, worth US$26,000, is aimed at promoting the sustainable use of coral reefs and the Nha Trang ecological system, which boasts the highest concentration of tourist sea diving activity, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

The project’s members also want to establish “Green Fins” groups across Vietnam and put forward environmental policies in the country.

It is a bid to cushion the local ecological system from adverse impacts caused by sea diving, the ministry added.

Ecologically harmful activities include causing damage to coral reefs – or even breaking them while anchoring or trampling on them during sea diving – and littering in the sea.

The Nha Trang Institute of Oceanography, the overseer of the “Green Fins” project, has conducted several activities – including making sure sea diving clubs throughout the province abide by the “Green Fins” code of conduct, setting up a Green Fins Vietnam website at www.greenfins.net, and handing out leaflets to diving club owners and tourists to raise awareness of sustainable diving.

The institute is based in Nha Trang, which makes it a natural location for “Green Fins” to be implemented into the local diving community on a pilot scale before expanding into other diverse and popular diving locations in the country.

Thirteen out of 15 diving clubs in Nha Trang have joined the “Green Fins” program so far.