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Divescapes 2009: submitted by Connie & David Faas, www.davco.cc - We learned so much about diving at Divescapes last weekend!
What an experience! The AUC’s Scuba Conference & Travel Show in Calgary was so worth the trip down south. Congratulations Cathie McCuaig, Brian Nadwidny and the AUC for putting on a great show. We learned so much about Canadian diving: the Greenland sharks in Quebec; Beluga whales in Manitoba; Newfoundland shipwrecks, BC artificial wrecks; and the life in a BC kelp forest. We also listened to the coolest stories about Canadians’ adventures in diving – stories about freediving; about diving in and under icebergs, and also tropical diving. The trade show exhibitors were also great: Calgary dive stores were there; plus freediving; Bill Coltart & Sharon Morgan with dive trips to BC and beyond; Andy Lamb and others with BC dive destinations; and a cool new underwater ‘geocaching’ game – see aquaquest.com for more details as their website is in final development – Clear Lake near Wainwright, will have two of the destinations to be found.
Favourite seminars: All the seminars and films were very good – fabulous actually! It is hard to pick a favourite, but two that are at the top of the list are Jill Heinerth’s (explorer, photographer, author and pioneering technical diver) and Mandy-Rae & Kirk Krack’s (world record holding
freedivers, and educators in courses, movies and documentaries about the ocean planet).
- Challenging the Unknown: On Friday night, Jill’s presentation was about how she got where she is today. What did she do to follow her heart and be part of the many adventures she has been fortunate to be part of? Anyone – diver or not – would enjoy her presentation. Her advice, personal examples and illustrations are relevant to all people: embrace change, work hard, ‘ask for the gig’, work hard, never stop learning, work hard,take it to the limit, and ‘let the kids scare themselves’ (ie– don’t make them live in a padded bubble).
- Ice Island: On Saturday night the feature film was the National Geographic film Ice Island – featuring Jill and the team exploring the largest iceberg to ever calve off of a glacier - Godzilla. Her introduction about how the film came to be was inspiring and hilarious, and the question/answer session afterward was fascinating.
- Freediving: This great presentation by Mandy-Rae and Kirk Krack consisted of two parts: first about freediving, how to do it safely, why people do it, and what the average person can accomplish with just a little training. The second part of the presentation was about the movie The Cove. The Cove: All dolphin lovers just have to see this documentary film. It has just been released, although the story has been worked on for ten years. Freedivers have a small part in the film, which is about a cove in Japan where a small group of fishermen believe it is their heritage to participate in this event. This cove is where many dolphins are ‘herded’ and selected for purchase for dolphin shows throughout the world. All remaining dolphins, tens of thousands of dolphins, in the cove are secretly slaughtered and the meat is sold. The rest of Japan and the world know next to nothing about how this is happening. This film will initiate discussions around the world. Mandy and Kirk were thought provoking, they presented both sides of the story, and they were very clear that this is not a simple right/wrong issue:it is hugely complicated. Dolphins are considered a ‘pest’ by these fishermen as they eat valuable fish food stock – you can compare their attitude to how we feel about rats as a pest who eat valuable grain. The issues include sustainability of the dolphin species, as entire pods of dolphins will be killed at once, and dolphins do not breed within their pod, so the scientific community is concerned. No research exists about how many dolphins there are in the world, and if this affects the survival of the species Another issue is can we condemn others for killing and eating dolphins? Can we compare this to cattle feedlots, where cattle are fattened just to be killed? Remember that people from India think it is sacrilegious to eat cow meat. Then there is the issue of selling the mercury contaminated dolphin meat. Unfortunately, the public that buys this meat is unaware of the contamination, and almost always unaware that the meat is the unpopular dolphin – it is usually marketed as ‘Emperor fish’ or another fish. Mandy and Kirk were neutral and calm as they presented both sides of this story. This documentary film is up for many awards since the release, and it will certainly provoke much discussion around the world.
- WWII Shipwrecks in Newfoundland: I have never really thought about diving at the East coast of Canada – thought of the longish plane ride, and we already have great wrecks on the West coast. However John McCuaig’s video presentation changed my mind – I have added Newfoundland WWII wrecks to my wana-dive list!
- Kelp Forest: Andy Lamb spoke on the ecology of a kelp forest. Andy always has a greatpresentation, and I will now be looking much more closely for the multiple forms of life in the kelp.
- Another ship sinking in BC! The Canadian Navy will celebrate its 100th year with the sinking of the HMCS Annapolis – a 371’ helicopter carryingdestroyer escort. Guys, we have to go to BC to see this! No date is set yet, but Howie Robbins of the ArtificialReef Society of BC confirms that it will be next year in Halket Bay in Howe Sound – north of Vancouver.
- Beluga whales: there are two reasonsto go to Churchill, Manitoba – to see polar bears and to see beluga whales. Barb Roy was there this Sept. and brought back stories and pictures – there is no dive operator there, but snorkel trips with the belugas are common. Cool!
- Greenland sharks: Jeff Gallant, who is also the author of the Diving Almanac, has been on the leading edge of research for these sharks for years. They have a wide range, and he has focused on areas near the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. He has the first ever live footage of the sharks, and has the wildest stories about their research, including ice diving at -50C! The week before these dives was much warmer, the week after was much warmer, but the expedition week was brutal! They now research and film in the summer, and are having great results.
Best of all we were there at Divescapes 2009 in Calgary, touching base with our various Dive buddies from around the country: David, Connie, Sue & Deb enjoyed visiting and reconnecting with Derek Sather (world record holder – of the world’s deepest beer contest), Bill Nadeau (author, tech dive instructor), Robbie Shaw (winner of one of the dive holidays to BC), the entire AUC council (including Mike Hussey, the heckler in the crowd), Fred Paddock, Connie & Tim Barker. Plus we were there making so many new friends and potential dive buddies - there were even attendees there from Regina, Sask and BC!
So it is our enthusiastic reccommendation to remember to make plans to attend Divescapes 2011 – in Edmonton – watch for the fall dates, venue and potential speakers to come! It's well worth the effort to attend! The qualitity of speakers who were brought in for Divescapes 2009 was incredible & well worth the cost of the Gold Pass especially considering it included 2 meals (Friday's VIP Reception and Saturday's Banquet) before Keynote presenter's Film Show. Thank you Alberta Underwater Council for continuing the Divescapes Conference tradition in Alberta.
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