Dominica announces Dive Fest 2007

by Matt Segal Monday, April 2nd, 2007

Article Summary:

Dominica has announced that the 14th annual Dive Fest will be held from July 6-15, 2007. This year’s event will include underwater photography workshops and contest, hosted by Dive Training Magazine‘s Barry and Ruth Guimbellott, and feature such sponsors as Oceanic and SeaLife.

Not just for divers, the event will also have whale watching, a treasure hunt, traditional boat races, and happy hour dances. For an idea of all the activities, visit last year’s Dominica Dive Fest 2006 blog, or watch for the Dive Fest 2007 website to be updated with this year’s schedule.

It is really sad to see that a forum like this is used to make this comment. It is obvious that this forum is for underwater photographers who love and wish to preserve our reefs and wildlife, therefore this is simply to cause friction. As the main organizer of Dive Fest I can assure all readers that the Dominica Watersports Association and the Hotel and Tourism Association do not support the Governments position on whaling. We have lobbied them to change their vote by pointing out that there is more potential for jobs and developement in tourism. We spend a lot of time in classrooms teaching kids about the need to protect reefs for the future. Dive Fest is used to teach locals to dive and get them to be aware of what an amazing resource the reefs and whales are to the country. We do many good things here and our only argument is the development of tourism for the country. Our voice is listened to but we need more divers and more tourism to make our point. If our voice goes away there will no one here to fight this fight. This is a highly complex issue that is not suitable for simplistic solutions. I will leave it at that, but I would really love to see poeple ask what can be done to help developing nations so that they do not see the need to follow this path.
Posted by macroman on 2007-04-11 13:04:02 Dominica's position on Whaling: As you may know, Dominica promotes the sustainable utilization of all living marine resources including whales. We support also the utilization of whale meat for food where those stocks are robust enough to sustain takes on their populations that are proven to be sustainable. Likewise we promote the alternate development of recreational activities surrounding whales so long as these activities do not adversely affect the social and ecological wealth fare of these populations. It is also feting to note that we respect the rights of others who share a difference of view with respect to use of our living marine resources . We simply hope that others will understand our views and respect our right to express our views with respect to utilization of our living marine resources. This debate can go on forever so I choose only to explain in a very simplistic way the position we express regarding the use and management of our living marine resources.
Posted by The Octopus on 2007-04-10 16:13:22