Environmental Scuba Diving Volunteer Project in Portugal

Volunteering with IVHQ in Portugal was an incredible experience. The country is absolutely beautiful, and getting to explore it with such fun, friendly people made it even better. My advice: be open and put yourself out there — everyone’s there to connect and have a great time. Totally worth it!

Portugal is a beautiful country and I can see why Lisbon is such a popular tourist destination (particularly) with Millennials. It's less expensive than other western European cities and Lisbon has a great food and wine culture. Not to mention, Lisbon and Cascais (where you will be diving) is quite beautiful. If you are looking to get your scuba diving certification, I would advise that you spend at least two weeks with the program. Sometimes dives get cancelled due to the temperament of the waters (low visibility, strong tides, etc.) so you run the risk of not completing the required number of dives in order to get your Open Water certification. Plus, you will not have time to do the marine litter pick ups so I would recommend two week minimum for new divers. The project itself-- the diving and picking up the litter-- is quite fun, however, a lot of the diving spots are quite clean so there's not too much litter to pick up. My suggestion to the project manager is to find new diving spots (or find spots on land like the beach, for instance) where there's actual litter to pick up, and if you are unable to find alternate locations, then you should think of other ways to make an impact on marine conservation because in truth, this project felt more like a diving program instead of an environmental diving program.