Festival of Finathons Around the World
The Trawangan Dive Finathon sparked an explosion of energy, fun and festivity in the name of sharks.
The Gili Islands off the coast of Lombok Indonesia, enjoyed a festival atmosphere as divers, locals and children joined together to protect sharks and raise funds for local projects. Trawangan Dive organised an island-wide triathlon challenge together with the Gili Eco Trust.
Throughout the race there were 200 people watching, cheering and placing bets as participants undertook an 800 metre ocean swim, 7.9km cycle ride and 5.6km run. Volunteers gave 50 local Indonesian children the opportunity to learn to swim followed by face painting and colourful hand printing to celebrate this special World Oceans Day event.
Thanks to everyone who took part, Trawangan Dive now tops the www.finathon.org team leaderboard donating a fintastic USD $3,764.
Blue Season Bali engaged local and international schools to get swimming for the cause raising funds for sharks and their local artificial reef project.
In the Philippines, Atmosphere Resorts and Liquid Dumaguete are battling it out to see who can swim the furthest and raise the most. They say it’s a “Fin-off to keep fins on!” All the children from Atmosphere's ONE International School, aged 3-7 years, will take part in a "mini Finathon" swimming laps in the pool.
On World Oceans Day, the Maldives saw their first Finathon™ event with DiveOceanus dive centres joining forces: "We want to show our support to the underwater world that we treasure so much here in the Maldives. Across all four DiveOceanus Dive centers, we are aiming to swim 20 km and raise $4000."
Ocean Encounters Lions Dive and Beach Resort in the Caribbean are FINatical about sharks and that's why they've decided to take on a Finathon™ challenge and raise funds for their protection. Their event will take place on July 13th and the relay team will be swimming the waters of Curacao.
Individual challenges take just as much dedication. Rick Kirkham of Frontier Scuba plans to swim 4.5km from Puerto Galera to Sabang beach, Philippines. If he raises more than $1,000 to protect sharks he’ll increase the challenge and swim from Verde Island to Puerto Galera - more than 8km. The Verde Island Passage is a narrow corridor of coral-filled tropical waters with the highest concentration of marine species of any region in the world’s oceans.
It’s wacky races and silly costumes for Remote Area Dive, Queensland where Martine Miller will swim in a shark suit bought online. Keen divers in Western Australia are swimming a combined Finathon distance of 100km. We love organiser, Tania Douthwaite’s call to action: “Be a part of something memorable that will create real change for our oceans in your lifetime. Be proud to be a do-er and not just a talker. Inspire yourself, inspire others and SWIM for FINS (and with fins if you need to)!"
In Germany, Lucas Schmitz, one of our Finathon™ Champions of the Week, is getting ready to not only swim for sharks but cycle across Europe to make it loud and clear that we need to put an end to the unsustainable killing of sharks. For every single pound £ that he can raise he will go two miles by bike. Lucas is hoping to raise enough funds to go from Germany to Portugal, but how far he goes in spreading awareness of the plight of sharks depends on you.
Good luck and thank you to all our Finathon™ Champions swimming to end finning for shark protection. From swimming pools to ocean relays, triathlons to wacky races, it’s a real festival of Finathons. Will you get swimming to end finning this July?www.finathon.org
