“Diving Adelaide” get behind Dive For Cancer again.

Who doesn’t love a day of sunshine, scuba diving, good food, interesting people AND raising money for an amazing cause? On the 21^st of February the third annual Dive for Cancer took place at Port Noarlunga. This year’s Dive for Cancer was again organised by Mark Tozer, who started the “Dive for Cancer” initiative in 2014. Since then it has inspired many divers in other states and several countries to run a Dive for Cancer (“Tauchen Gegen Krebs” in Germany and “Duiken Tegen Kanker” in The Netherlands for example).

To support the Dive for Cancer, divers from all over the state purchased a $65 ticket that gave them access to the dive and a lunch afterwards.  Early in the morning on the 21^st of February, everyone met for a couple of group shots and then 130 divers headed towards the ocean to Dive for Cancer! After a refreshing dive we all gathered at the Port Noarlunga Surf Live Saving club where it was a joy to see all the different divers representing all active dive clubs and dive centres from across the industry and community, united as one. Everybody enjoyed catching up over a delicious lunch and a few drinks, while being entertained by various great guest speakers. Everyone was also invited to participate in the silent auction with some awesome items up for grabs (from snorkel sets to wine fridges and from flatscreen TVs to cinema tickets). It was a pleasure to see people from all walks of life mingling and talking about a shared passion (while secretly outbidding each other!).

The guest speakers invited by Mark for the day, were local celebrity and shark attack survivor, Rodney Fox, who is running the famous Fox Great White Shark Cage Dive company. The great story teller Dr. Richard Harris did a talk about extreme(!) cave diving, and dr. Bruce Wauchope showed us all about the dangers of skin cancer. Being a diver himself, Dr. Wauchope did a great job of explaining the dangers of being out in the sun all day and how to take precautions while we’re out diving.

All in all it was a beautiful day filled with sunshine and laughter, and we managed to raise well over $20.000 in just this single day to support cancer research through the Cancer Council SA. Here is to next year’s event – fingers crossed we’ll manage to raise even more money next year!

 

Written by Ron & Denise van der Marel
Owners/Dive Instructors at Diving Adelaide (www.divingadelaide.com.au) and OnlineDiveGear (www.onlinedivegear.com.au) and sponsors of Dive For Cancer.