29/11/07

Boot 2008 Dive Show, Duesseldorf, Germany - We are exhibiting again!

For the 16th consecutive occasion we will be at the Boot Show in Dusseldorf. From 19th to 27th January we look forward to meeting you at our stand 3 E28 in Hall 3, alongside the Diving Tower along with Aqualung.

Our latest offers and information, good conversation and something to cure your dry throat will be waiting for you!

On the booth our team: Marion, Chantal, Regina, Stephan, Freddy, Uwe and Matthias.

DIVE POINT supports the Whale Shark Awareness Red Sea Project!

The Whale Shark Awareness Red Sea Project in collaboration with Project Aware is now underway. The project aims to increase awareness locally, create a Red Sea Whale Shark network and encourage divers and snorkelers to report their sightings to assist with global research and conservation.

Sightings of this gentle giant cruising through the Red Sea have been on the increase in the past months.

DIVE POINT is supporting the project; the Project Aware Whale Shark T shirts are on sale now in the Dive shop! Proceeds go towards awareness, global research and conservation.

LEARN MORE! – Join the Whale Shark Awareness Seminar coming soon!

Whale sharks have been sighted in the last few months, north around the area of Shabruur Umm Gamar and as far South as Shaab Rumi in Sudan. Several Whale Sharks have also been seen imbetween, in the areas around Hurghada, Marsa Alam, Elphinstone and Fury Shoal.

The Photo Identification Library has formally identified three new Red Sea whale sharks since November 2006. This brings the count to seven in the Red Sea; the number of sightings recently suggests there could be more.

Using a special computerized technique to identify the spots on the skin of the Whale Shark similar to how NASA “maps” the stars in the galaxies, the Photo Identification Library uses photos to assist researchers studying whale shark migrations and producing information that is essential for the protection of these huge harmless fish. You can help by sending in photographs of the left and right side of the Whale Shark above the pectoral fins near the gills. The total number of recorded Whale Shark encounters is just 3356, with only 838* identified worldwide.

*correct at time of print

Have you seen a Whale Shark in the Red Sea? Contact info@whalesharkredsea.com or call +2 0111 926 898 with details!

Read more interesting facts about the largest fish in the world by logging on to www.projectaware.org and REMEMBER to submit your photos!

DID YOU KNOW?

• The Whale Shark, Rhincodon typus dates back to the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods 245 -65 million years ago.

• Whale Sharks are fish and therefore obtain oxygen via their gills.

• Whale Sharks are regarded as highly migratory.

• Whale Sharks have internal fertilization and produce live young. Pups are born at fraction of their adult size – being only approximately 55cm in length at birth, and reach sexual maturity; it is thought, after 30 years.

• The estimated life span of a Whale Shark is between 80 and 150 years.

The whale shark is considered “vulnerable to extinction” by the ICUN (World Conservation Union), but is only protected in a few of the approximately 100 countries it is said to visit - indicating the need for us all to be concerned for the future of this amazing giant of the oceans!

Dive Point Red Sea receives another PADI Certificate of Recognition for Excellence!

This August Martina and Jochen Egger from Austria successfully completed their Open Water Diver training with Dive Point. They wrote about their positive experiences during their stay and sent the letter to PADI Europe. We are very happy about their positive reinforcement to Dive Point services and we look forward to exceeding their expectations again during their next visit at the end of October J. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Instructor Training Schedule 2008 ready for download!

Last week PADI International Limited (PIL) announced the Instructor Examination (IE) 2008 dates for Egypt. Check the download section for the 2008 instructor training schedule for PADI Instructor Development Courses and Instructor continuing education programs in Hurghada with Dive Point Red Sea. All programs can be scheduled for individual dates by request.

APRÈS DIVE FUN AT DIVE POINT! After diving, comes eating, drinking and many funny fishy stories…!

The fun, easy going and friendly atmosphere at Dive Point is well known and is very important to guests and staffs alike, here’s the latest news from last weeks get together.

At 3 June we had another great BBQ to celebrate the arrival of some delicious pork steaks and sausages, especially imported from Germany by Peter (Well done for remembering pork products are scarce here in Hurghada! – new guests take note J!). The menu was completed with some local meats and chicken too, and the Dive Point staff and boat crews culinary talents added to the great spread.

Delicious food, a bunch of fun divers and plenty of beer from our Diver Bar are all the essential ingredients for a great evening. As usual with dive buddies, many funny diver stories (and one or two serious ones!) entertained us well into the night and when the story telling was finished there were more drinks and some singing! (No comment!) The night passed by all too quickly with lots of laughs, and everyone enjoyed the evening of food and fun. (Even the Dive Point dogs Grinchie and Fritzi!)

Thanks to the Dive Point Team! - Multi talented as always, big ’THANK YOU’ to Geoffroy, Instructor by day and Grill Master Chef by night! And to the girls, Monika and Gabi for their delicious German potato and noodle salads, and not to forget Uwe for organising the event and of course to our guests who were in great spirits, added to the mood and made the evening a memorable success. Great fun was had by all and hey – Let’s Do It Again!

Editors Note: Don’t forget to bring the SausagesJ!

Picture This! Paul and Vicky show off their “snaptastic” new skills!

Getting up close to the wonders of the underwater world is fascinating and full of surprises! Divers sit together after a days diving, “off gassing” with a few beers describing the amazing sights they have seen during the day – creating the “pictures” in their mind. This has to be one of the main reasons why so many people are diving!

Paul and Vicky wanted more than that – so what is the solution? - They booked the PADI Specialty Courses Digital Underwater Photography and Underwater Videographer.

While the other guests spent the day on board the daily boat, Vicky and Paul studied the essentials of digital underwater photography with Gabi. The start point for the course is camera preparation, the importance of this realised in the afternoon when one of the divers came back with her flooded camera saying “I should have done this course before using my camera”…

….so back to Vicky and Paul who had already learnt all the necessary theory and had some fun experimenting with their new techniques on the stunning Dive Point house reef. They both completed the second part of the course perfectly, the results…. some great photos as you can see below. The après dive stories get much more interesting now!

Armed with their new skills from the Digital Underwater Photography course about different settings for light and colour there was no stopping these two – on with the next course! Paul and Vicky were eager to learn more and fortunately have lots of patience!J

So its on with the Underwater Videographer course – They start with the theory first, all about different kind of cameras and housings, how to handle and hold the housing and some fun experimenting with dry land shots before they could put the exercises in to practise the next day on board the daily boat.

Well Done to Paul and Vicky for successfully completing two courses each and thanks for brightening our day with your smiles! Good Luck movie-makers!

If you would like more information about the Digital Underwater Photography or Underwater Videographer course – just click the link!

Boot 2007 Dive Show, Duesseldorf, Germany - We are exhibiting again!

For the 15th consecutive occasion we will be at the Boot Show in Dusseldorf. From 20th to 28th January we look forward to meeting you at our stand 3 E28 in Hall 3, alongside the Diving Tower along with Aqualung.

Our latest offers and information, good conversation and something to cure your dry throat will be waiting for you!

On the booth our team: Marion, Chantal, Stephan, Freddy and Matthias.

Dive Point Red Sea receives 2 PADI Certificates of Recognition for Excellence!

After many years of valuable and active support for PADI, both Dive Point Red Sea and its owner Matthias Breit, a Course Director, each received a PADI Award as Recognition for Excellence.

Quoting PADI, these awards recognise the untiring efforts of Matthias and his team in developing the diving industry. The awards were presented in Hurghada by PADI Europe’s Regional Manager Thomas Sobotta on 18th September at the Instructor Examination closing ceremony. Click on the photos to enlarge.

18/09/05

The yearly AWARE Beach Cleanup held on the 17 September for the “20th International Cleanup Day” was another great success! On one hand all participants where very pleased to have collected more than 1000kg of rubbish! On the other hand everybody thought that it was depressing to see how inconsiderate people are by simply throwing rubbish on the ground or overboard!

The people worked hard the entire day to clean up reefs, beaches and underwater and all were very satisfied to see their achievements at the end of the day. Among the things that we collected were syringes, tires, engine parts, boat railings, oil canisters, anchors, plastic bottles, steel bars, building materials like wood and steel, fishing nets, fish traps and many more. The heavy parts required the use of lift bags by our instructors as they were too heavy to be removed otherwise!

More than 60 people took part in the cleanups organized by Dive Point Red Sea at the Rotana Coral Beach Resort, The Oberoi Hotel and at four dive sites on the same day! Everybody involved also supported PADI`s project ”Protect the Sharks“, signing a Project Aware petition to have ten species of shark officially registered as endangered. Even more people were involved behind the scenes to make this cleanup run smoothly! The Hotel Staff prepared nice snacks and also helped with the transport of the rubbish that was collected! We all had a really great day and a lot of fun! Special thanks to Jana for her coordination and close cooperation with the hotels and for promoting the event to all hotel guests!

We would like to thank everybody who helped us that day and we hope that next year we will have a larger event with the same success and even more participants to help in cleaning the magical world we all like to swim, snorkel and dive in!

Check what we collected this year on our Beach Clean up picture gallery. For those interested in the statistics from Project AWARE on the garbage collection in 2004, we have made them available as a pdf file on our Download page.

PADI Rescue Update Workshop conducted at Dive Point Red Sea

PADI International Limited has chosen again the best facilities in Hurghada to conduct one of their programs: the Rescue Update Workshop for Instructors, Course Directors and PADI divers has been conducted on 31st July at Dive Point Red Sea!

This update was organized to review and update the skills of the PADI Rescue Diver course, following its complete revision at the end of last year. It was also the occasion for a get together of PADI Members in the area and for introducing the most current in water rescue resuscitation guidelines & techniques as well as to focus on the specifics of dive emergencies.

To see how it looked like, and to see PADI Course Directors in action, visit our PIL Rescue Workshop picture gallery.

IDC July 2005 - Another great success for our Instructor Development Team!

Also the IDC in July at Dive Point Red Sea ended with another very successful Instructor Examination conducted by Terry Johnson of PADI International Limited (Thanks Terry for being so kind and easy going!!!). All of our 4 candidates became PADI Instructors with extremely good scores during the exams and are therefore joining our big family. Congratulations to each one of you!

To be recognized is that this was our first IDC ever since 1996 with ONLY female Instructor candidates from Germany, Switzerland and El Quseir/Egypt (even though Vanessa is originally from Germany J). Jana & Thomas of our team became PADI IDC Staff Instructors together with Klaus from Germany. That makes a total of more than 50 successful new Instructors so far this year with the leading Instructor Development Facility in Egypt!

Among the more than 600 photo which we have taken during the course and the exam, we have put our “best of” on the IDC July part 1 and part 2. Check the Picture Gallery page!

Skubba Shop Hurghada

For many years, Dive Point Red Sea has been the largest retailer and distributor of PADI & DAN educational materials in Egypt. Since June 2005, our material sales have been relocated from the Rotana Coral Beach Resort into a more convenient location in Hurghada under the new name of Skubba Shop Hurghada.

To know more about the various services of Skubba for PADI and DAN members, please visit our Skubba website.

2nd PADI 5 Star Career Development Center Award for Dive Point Red Sea!

Our diving center at The Oberoi Sahl Hasheesh has been awarded on 17th March 2005 the PADI 5 Star Career Development Center Status by PADI International Limited. Dive Point Red Sea is now operating two of only five 5* CDC Centers in Egypt!