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Top Island Econauts Dive Club holds free event for certified divers

“It’s incredibly important to practice what happens if your gear malfunctions”
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EMILY HOLMES PHOTO Top Island Econauts and friends during the 2018 Dive Extravaganza.

Do you have your scuba diving certification? If so, The Top Island Econauts Dive Club is holding a free event April 6 at the Port Hardy pool and they want you to come out and participate.

“We will be offering a scuba diving skills practice session,” said Econauts President Jackie Hildering about the event. “This is free for anyone with dive certification. It is from 10:00 a.m. to noon.”

She added what the club is aiming to do with the session is “give people an opportunity to practice their skills to start diving again and, for those already diving regularly, to practice the skills to stay safe. It’s incredibly important to practice what happens if your gear malfunctions, or how to bring someone up to the surface — we’ve got the cold to deal with here, we’ve got currents, and we try to go through and practice the whole range of conceivable things that can go wrong while diving.”

As for what makes diving in the North Island so popular, Hildering said it “attracts people from all over the world, and what makes it so extraordinary is that the cold water and current supports an incredibly rich ecosystem. The plankton and abundant oxygen supports so much life and leads to this area having many of “the giants” such as the world’s largest species of sea star, anemone, barnacle, etc!”

If you want to join the club, you can contact them on their website at www.econauts.org, and “as long as it’s clear you have dived recently, then we are thrilled to share our expertise and have you be in the club,” added Hildering, who noted that if you don’t have dive certification but want to learn how, please check out Sun Fun Divers, whose business is based in Port McNeill.

The Top Island Econauts Dive Club is a non-profit society aimed at facilitating safe and ecologically sound recreational diving on northern Vancouver Island.

The club is dedicated to sharing expertise and adhering to safe practice with a strict “no touch, no take” approach and has a strong commitment to marine research and education.

The Top Island Econauts Dive Club was established in 1975 to promote safe and environmentally sound recreational diving on Northern Vancouver Island.


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JACKIE HILDERING PHOTO Top Island Econauts Dive Club members out on the water.


Tyson Whitney

About the Author: Tyson Whitney

I have been working in the community newspaper business for nearly a decade, all of those years with Black Press Media.
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