BRITISH DIVE SHOW

Birmingham National Exhibition Centre was the venue for the 24-25^th October 2009 DIVE show. This show presents a great opportunity for dive centres from all corners of the globe to exhibit their diving and to promote courses, trips and diving holidays of all types. From the Red Sea liveaboards to Caribbean reef dives to British and Scandinavian dry suit dives, the diversity of dive experiences available is huge.

 

African Space is a dive organisation run by James Parker and Louis van Aardt. Their stand this year saw the collaboration of Ben Jones, dive manager from the Sodwana Bay Lodge Resort; Louis from Pro Dive in Port Elizabeth; Alison Towner (our marine biologist from Gansbaai's shark cage diving company, Marine Dynamics and a couple of research divers from Tanzania. The motives of African Space were simple - to inform the British public of the diving opportunities available in Africa with a focus on South Africa. The team consists of people actually working in the dive resorts who can tell the interested diver exactly what to expect. African Space promotes only eco friendly dive operators and ensures that when a person books with them that they are well looked after and transported to each dive destination in an organised and stress free way. The team made lots of connections and contacts and an educational talk was given by Alison on both the Saturday and Sunday on using eco tourism to fund white shark research. This gave us the opportunity to highlight our conservation initiatives with regard to the white shark. For more on our research projects, click here.

 

The show hosts guest speakers with talks and seminars held in hourly slots throughout the two days. People can choose to walk into a presentation of their interest with opportunities to ask questions at the end- which gives a really educational and interactive angle to the show. This year one of the most popular presentations was given by Mark Addison- a South African shark expert and free diver based in Rocky bay near Umkomaas in the KZN province. Marks talk composed stunning under water footage by Charles Maxwell (a very well reputed South African cameraman) and it featured the sardine run, tiger shark diving, great whites and ragged tooth sharks. Marks professionalism in diving combined with his passion for shark conservation made a real impact on the British diving audience and aroused plenty of interest in South Africa as a dive. At the end of Mark’s talk on the Saturday a 6 year old boy stood up and asked Mark in front of 400 people- 'So what can I do to help?!' Nice to know we have a budding conservationist in the mix.

 

Another popular talk was given by Richard Pierce- a UK shark expert who published the book ‘Sharks of the British Seas.’ He also runs the Shark Conservation society (SCS) and Shark Trust.He presented his findings on various shark research expeditions in the Middle East (Qatar and Bahrain) and also his white shark expeditions in the Mediterranean off Croatia. Richard did not manage to find white sharks at either location but did establish a possible new pupping ground for blue sharks in the Med and confirmed a number of new species of sharks in the Middle East. The Shark Trust and Richard work really hard to answer questions on areas that have had little research done previously and his next mission is to search for great white sharks off the north west coast of Scotland next year. Best of luck to him!

 

Many thanks must go to African Space for sharing their space with Marine Dynamics.