BSAC 2012 Elections

Following its successful introduction last year, BSAC will be repeating the online voting system for the forthcoming BSAC election.

This year’s election sees three council positions.  In addition the positions of Honorary Secretary and National Diving Officer will also available. If you fancy standing for BSAC Council you’ve got until the end of the month for nominations!  Contact BSAC Headquarters for more information.

For more information click here

The Verdict is in – The 2011 UK Diving Trade Show

250 Trade Personnel (including Dive Centre Owners, Shop Managers, Pro Instructors, manufacturers and distributors), 20 Exhibitors, 6 members of the Diving Media (British Diver, Diver, Dive The World, Scuba, Sport Diver, X-Ray Magazine), 6 Training Agencies (ANDI, BSAC, GUE, IANTD, PADI, SAA), 2 members of the HSE Diving Inspectorate and 1 professional cartoonist attended the 2011 UK Diving Trade Show on Sunday 27th and Monday 28th November 2011.

During the two day event 12 talks were given covering topics such as “Ecopreneurship” (David Jones), “Is your website working for you?” (Richard Howes), “The down and dirty on image copyright” (Simon Brown), “The BSAC snorkel diver course” (Margaret Baldwin) and “Power Up with Proven Business Practices” (Simon Chance).

Dr Neal W Pollock, (the Canadian version of Professor Simon Mitchell), DAN America’s Research Director and the event’s key note speaker went down a storm with the attendees.

Key Note Speaker Dr Neal W Pollock (DAN) & Show Organiser Rosemary E Lunn (TUMC)

He gave two exceptionally useful, entertaining and educational talks to industry personnel covering “How fit is ‘fit to dive‘ ” and “Thermal stress and diving. “I’ve been inspired to start exercising again after listening to Neal”, observed one delegate.  Meanwhile a number of the audience in the Thermal Stress talk soon discovered that they were probably not bordering on hypothermia following a winter dive at Stoney Cove. While less exciting on the fish story scale, they were merely “just cold”.

Cold water featured heavily during the UK Diving Industry Christmas Party when award winning cinematographer, Doug Allan, gave a mouth-watering presentation on the BBC’s Frozen Planet series.  The talk kicked off with a brilliant sequence filmed from a helicopter.  The shot began with a wide view across the polar ice that continually tracked to eventually swoop in low, and closed with a very tight image of a Polar Bear. Over the next 30 minutes Doug transported the entire audience to polar regions with his superb imagery and stories.

Another man with an interesting story was Fraser Bathgate.  This year he was the first Brit to win the DEMA Reaching Out Award, and this was acknowledged during the Dinner – Fraser received a much deserved standing ovation for the work he has done in the field of disabled diving.  It was fitting therefore that the raffle was in aid of Deptherapy and raised just shy of £1,500.  SITA gratefully acknowledges the generosity of BBG Distribution, Rod Roddenbury, and everyone who donated something yummy for the two Christmas Hampers.

There were more reasons to celebrate success and the party was the perfect place for SITA to thank and honour Douglas Nash of PADI.  He is retiring shortly after more than 32 years service to the Industry.  Vini Howlett, Chairman of the Scuba Industries Trade Association presented Doug with an engraved decanter whilst highlighting key aspects of Doug’s career.

On the product front, the 2011 UK Diving Trade Show saw the British debut of more than 50 products including Fourth Element’s Core Body Warmer, Storm Jacket and Arctic one piece.  ”This was a good opportunity to meet many of our UK Dealers and will form an important part of our UK activity in years to come”, stated Jim Standing.

Meanwhile, over on the Hollis / Oceanic stand Kelvin Richards stated, “I did not get much of an opportunity to go and listen to the speakers due to the overwhelming work load. This was the UK unveiling of the Hollis Explorer Rebreather and there was huge interest in it.  It made me proud to see the trade platform come back into our industry and Oceanic/Hollis will certainly support all future trade events”.

The Poseidon stand was also packed, as Simon Morris launched 46 new products.  ”It was important to us to showcase our latest equipment range to the UK Diving Industry who couldn’t make it over to Orlando for DEMA”. New products include the “One” wetsuits, Rebreather wing, Rebreather BCD with the counter lungs built in, line cutters, wet boots, rash vests, iPAD holder, laptop bag, stage cylinder bag and fins.

Attendees included Chris Wake of Christal Seas Scuba who left his newly constructed dive centre and drove over from Norwich “to meet up with suppliers and other people in our Industry.  I found it useful catching up with industry personnel I’ve not seen in ages and the social side was great.  It was well worth attending”.

Premier Diving Equipment, a new company to the diving industry attended the UK Diving Trade Show for the first time.  ”We came to meet people we’ve been talking to for the last 12 months”, explained Rachael Bell.  ”We’ve made a lot of new contacts and it was good to be able to spend time with key players and explain our product range to them.  The talks were really interesting, especially Neal Pollock’s Thermal Stress because we’re just about to launch a heated vest.  I think what’s equally important is that from a personal point of view, I really can’t wait to get out and do some more UK diving”!

Images from the UK Diving Industry Trade Show can be found on www.facebook.com/tumc.co.uk

Press Coverage includes;
www.britishdiver.co.uk

DiveLife, Manchester’s premier Scuba Centre has moved and expanded

It’s the sport that so many of you have always wanted to do, but have just never got around to it.  Perhaps you tried it on holiday and loved it, but never thought you could do a course and get qualified. Or you’ve learnt overseas but never considered you could happily do it in theUK.  “It” of course is Scuba Diving.

Interest in scuba diving continues to grow and you can understand why when watching incredible marine life courtesy of the BBC’s Blue Planet.  With the Red Sea Riviera now a leading economical sunshine destination, more and more holiday makers are having their own ‘Blue Planet moment’ snorkelling the beautiful Egyptian waters. A fact that has impacted in a positive way on Whitefield based DiveLife (www.divelife.co.uk).

Less than four years ago DiveLife was a brand new dive centre. Today the shop on Bury New Road has been outgrown, hence the relocation to bigger premises just a 100 yards away around the corner behind the Beehive Pub. 

“At DiveLife we all have a passion for diving, and this is what DiveLife is all about”, explained Owner Brett Thorpe. “I guess this is probably why we’ve grown so quickly. Although we’re a young company, we do have a lot of ‘real diving’ experience. If you take the shop staff for instance, we’ve got 62 years of diving knowledge between the 6 of us, so we really do know about scuba diving and understand it’s such a cool sport.  Learning to dive can really change your life and we’ve had people who’ve tried it on holiday come to us to do to their PADI Open Water Course.  Because they love the sports so much, they’ve now swapped their pin-striped suit for a rubber one and become professional instructors, which means they can teach diving anywhere in the World”.

It’s a less well known fact that you don’t have to travel far to experience good diving. We’re lucky in the UK that our diving can be pretty awesome because of our rich and varied marine life. We’re also a maritime nation which means we’ve got unique opportunities to dive with mischievous seals, majestic basking sharks, and historical wrecks such as the German High Seas Fleet. Overtime these wrecks evolve into artificial reefs and get covered in a myriad of life including all sorts of anemones. The sheer opulence and richness of Jewel Anemones are completely unexpected and beautiful to look at and enjoy. Vibrant oranges, gaudy pinks and brilliant Forget-me-not blues that turn purple when a torch beam hits them, which is why so many British divers think that UK diving is some of the very best in the World.

Learning to dive isn’t difficult, but as with anything worth being serious about, you’ll need to invest some time and effort. Compared with other adventure sports it’s also relatively inexpensive. To take part you don’t need to be able to swim that well, just need to be in good health and be reasonably comfortable in the water. When it comes to courses, in Britain there are half a dozen dive training agencies, and one of the most popular is the Professional Association of Diving Instructors and their Open Water Course.  This is an internationally recognised diving qualification so it’s no surprise that many people begin their exciting journey into the Underwater World by visiting their local PADI Dive Centre. 

“We’re a PADI 5 Star Instructor Development Centre”, grinned Brett Thorpe.   “This is awarded to a dive centre that consistently achieves the highest standard of instruction.  Since we opened in Spring 2006, we’ve proudly trained and issued over 1,500 diving qualifications.  So if this is something that you’ve always wanted to do, why not come along and have a go. Twice a week we have a Scuba Experience night, and this is where complete beginners have the opportunity of doing a pool dive with one of our instructors. At £25 we’ve found this to be a very popular present for Christmas, Birthdays, or as a special treat, because it’s exciting, different and a unique experience. It’s really great to see each person surface after their dive with a big grin on their face saying “it’s the best thing I’ve ever done”.

You’ll be in safe hands at DiveLife because we have a strong and diverse professional instructional team with our male and female instructors ranging in age from 20 to 55.  Every one of us believes in developing their own personal diving knowledge since it provides the very best services to our customers. This means that if at any time someone needs some extra tuition for instance, we are able to help and support them.

This ethos is also carried over into our premises, because we know that divers want a fully inventoried shop containing only the very best brands.  It’s one of the reasons we grew out of Bury New Road because we can now stock all kinds and sizes of kit that enables us to give good quality equipment counselling. We’re very near to Junction 17 on the M60, so why not drop by for a cup of tea and see what DiveLife and our new shop is all about. At this time of year we often get requests for help from friends and family of divers popping in to buy them something, so please ask if you want some advice. We’ve got loads of free car parking, which makes looking for your first mask, fins and snorkel easy. And for those divers who have not discovered us yet, it doesn’t matter if you enjoy single cylinder diving, prefer a twinset, dive a Rebreather or just want to know more about snorkelling and diving, we would be delighted to help you get more out of scuba diving. It can be your passport to changing your life”.

BSAC Forums now have a firm footing as the British Sub Aqua Club launch their 21st Century IT Rollout Programme

It’s a bit like children really.  Once they’ve been born, you can’t imagine life without them, and the same is true for diver Forums.  Over the past seven years, forums and their popularity have grown spectacularly, so that today they are definitely an integral part of diver communications.

“We knew that the old system was out of date and not meeting the needs of our members”, stated Keith Lawrence, Head of Information Technology.  “I’m proud to say that this is all changing, thanks to the combined efforts of the IT and Forum Teams.  For the last umpteen months there has been a lot of work going on behind the scenes, consequently this is the first visible sign of what has been going on, and there’s more to come.  I’m really excited that the contemporary Forums are now on line.  What we’ve done is install a brand new web server system, using the latest and probably the most popular forum software.  The result is a solution designed to provide divers with a quick, easy and fun way to communicate and find information.

We wanted something flexible, and that can grow and evolve as Member’s needs change.  Our aim was to build and develop a range of dedicated forums for Branch Officers, Coaches, Instructors, BSAC Clubs, Members and others, with the key word being ‘involvement’.  As all of the Forum Team dive, we were of one accord, that we wanted to empower our members. With this is mind we would really like each group to take ownership of their own forum.  So we’ve ramped up our commitment to online forums accordingly, and now provide divers with a solution tailored specifically to the needs of members and BSAC, but also has something for everyone interested in diving.

This is part of the long term strategy, a realisation, that my teams and I have had to change the way BSAC is using IT.  We want to improve the club and the facilities to its members, and give divers the IT solutions they deserve, want, need and desire.  The new forums are not the only thing that the BSAC IT Team is doing.  This is the first in a series of new and revitalised services that will integrate with our HQ systems, firmly establishing the BSAC as a 21^st Century club with on-line solutions.  So why not got and check them out for yourself at www.bsacforum.co.uk”