The costs we have on our volunteer costs page are below the running cost for the project. If TRACC didn’t have considerable sponsorship we would lose money on every volunteer. We could not keep the price so low if we didn’t have massive sponsorship for gear and consumables. Our compressor, dive gear and dive tanks are sponsored but we have to pay for the consumables which works out at £3.20 per dive. With volunteers and dive masters doing 3 or more dives per day, the air fill cost alone approaches £100 per week per person. We do not charge my salary or our office costs to the project only the staff who actually interact with the volunteers everyday. The amounts we charge are less than any other diving project we can find. Many of our volunteers do 18 dives per week, some manage 70 in a month. That works out at £16 per dive including food and accommodation. I don’t think you can dive on a coral reef for less than that anywhere in the world. All your money with TRACC goes towards your costs or conservation.
Earthwatch, Sierra and others charge over $3000 per vol for 2 weeks and actually only offer $800 to the project leader/scientist. So $2200 goes to HQ and $800 goes to accommodate, feed, transport and train the volunteers. We believe your money should go to support and train you, not some expensive suits in an expensive office in an expensive city.
Check out the projects TRACC has done – See all the Oil companies, that’s right we work for oil companies and then fund conservation work with the profits.
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