Last year, as soon as the new AWARE Shark Conservation Diver course was unveiled, we immediately sought qualification from PADI to be able to teach this course, and have been featuring it on our website ever since. In fact, we were the first dive centre in Montreal to offer this course. (You may have noticed a trend in us being first to bring these conservation activities to Montreal. We love the work being done by Project AWARE and don`t need much convincing to adopt the newest policies and courses!)

We now offer the AWARE Shark Conservation Diver course on ALL of our scuba diving group trips - which we do several of every year. Our 2012 trips alone include Little Cayman, Bahamas, Galapagos and Belize, and we`ll be adding one more for November.

As part of the Big Shark Shout Out Month, we held an AWARE Shark Conservation Diver course on April 10, to help educate our divers and non-divers alike. Our goal is to turn each and every one of our divers into shark evangelists, so that they may spread the word in the community about sharks.

We believe one of the biggest challenges standing in the way of shark protection is the general public attitude. Sharks are misunderstood and misrepresented by the media, so we`re asking all of our divers to do their part and tell one or two friends (or more) about why our planet needs sharks, why they are being wiped out, and what they as individuals can do.

It`s that simple! We believe that we can help bring about a real attitude change, one diver at a time.

And we`re getting there. We are seeing more and more of our divers standing up for sharks, sharing links and information via social media, signing petitions, and more.

It`s a great feeling to know that we`re helping shape a global movement, and we`re looking foward to continuing with this work.

Thanks again to our great friends at Project AWARE for leading the way and for providing such a fantastic framework for education.

And since our divers will be off to Bahamas next week to scuba dive with sharks and complete their AWARE Shark Conservation Diver Specialty Course certification, we`ll have even more people speaking up on behalf of sharks everywhere!